trammel

English

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -æməl

Etymology

From French tramail (“net for catching fishes”), from Late Latin tremaculum.

Noun

trammel (plural trammels)

1. Something that impedes activity, freedom, or progress.
   • 1898, William Graham Sumner, “The Conquest of the United States by Spain”, in War and Other Essays, Yale, published 1911, page 332:

     The men who came here were able to throw off all the trammels of tradition and established doctrine.

Translations

Something that impedes activity, freedom, or progress

Spanish: traba (es)

Verb

trammel (third-person singular simple present trammels, present participle trammelling, simple past and past participle trammelled) (UK) trammel (third-person singular simple present trammels, present participle trammeling, simple past and past participle trammeled) (US)

1. To entangle, as in a net.
   • 1880 Dante Gabriel Rosetti, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, lines 9-10

     the scarce-snatched hours

     Which deepening pain left to his lordliest powers: —

     Heaven lost through spider-trammelled prison-bars.

2. (transitive) To hamper.

Translations

To entangle, as in a net

German: fesseln (de)

Spanish: trabar (es)

To hamper

German: behindern (de), hemmen (de)

Spanish: trabar (es)