trammel
See also: Trammel
English edit
Etymology edit
From Middle English trameyle, from Old French tramail (“net for catching fish”), from Late Latin tremaculum, from tri- (“tri-”) + macula (“spot, speck; mesh, cell”). Cognate with Italian tramaglio (“trammel”), Spanish trasmallo (“drift net”).
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
trammel (plural trammels)
- Whatever impedes activity, progress, or freedom, such as a net or shackle.
- 1825, Francis Jeffrey, “Campbell's Theodric”, in The Edinburgh Review January 1825:
- [They] disclaim the trammels of any sordid contract.
- 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.
- A fishing net that has large mesh at the edges and smaller mesh in the middle
- A kind of net for catching birds, fishes, or other prey.
- 1633, 1609, Richard Carew, The Survey of Cornwall. […], new edition, London: […] B. Law, […]; Penzance, Cornwall: J. Hewett, published 1769, →OCLC:
- The tuck carrieth a like fashion , save that it is narrower meshed , and ( therefore scarce lawful ) with a long bunt in the midst : the trammel differeth not much from the shape of this bunt, and serveth to such use as the wear and haking.
- 1633,
- A set of rings or other hanging devices, attached to a transverse bar suspended over a fire, used to hang cooking pots etc.
- A net for confining a woman's hair.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
- Her golden lockes she roundly did uptye
In breaded tramels, that no looser heares
Did out of order stray about her daintie eares.
- A kind of shackle used for regulating the motions of a horse and making it amble.
- (engineering) An instrument for drawing ellipses, one part of which consists of a cross with two grooves at right angles to each other, the other being a beam carrying two pins (which slide in those grooves), and also the describing pencil.
- A beam compass.
Derived terms edit
Translations edit
something that impedes activity, freedom, or progress
|
device to suspend cooking pots over a fire
|
Verb edit
trammel (third-person singular simple present trammels, present participle (UK) trammelling or (US) trammeling, simple past and past participle (UK) trammelled or (US) trammeled)
- 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.
- (transitive) To confine; to hamper; to shackle.
- 1854, Henry David Thoreau, Slavery in Massachusetts:
- In their vote, you would get something of some value, at least, however small; but in the other case, only the trammelled judgment of an individual, of no significance, be it which way it might.
- 1948, Winston Churchill, The Second World War:
- Virtuous motives, trammeled by inertia and timidity, are no match for armed and resolute wickedness.
Translations edit
to entangle, as in a net
to hamper
|