Perhaps the biggest problem in election administration today is that we are using an outdated, ramshackle registration system.
We remained secluded in our ramshackle burrow for seven nights, Laila recuperating slowly while I foraged after dark for blood.
Houses, some grand, others ramshackle, sit empty, cars in driveways.
Passing this unworkable, ramshackle bill is counterproductive or irrelevant to that task.
It was ramshackle and a little messy, but they were neither very poor people nor evidently moneyed.
The peons rarely have anything better than ramshackle quarters.
I looked round, but the ramshackle cart was hidden by the turn of the road.
There were some clumsily indicated buildings, possibly sheds and stables of daub and wattle, eking out the ramshackle house.
His ramshackle dwelling was an eighth of a mile from the Gould-Hamilton place.
You've seen them crack far harder nuts than this ramshackle old castle of yours!
1809, back-formation from ramshackled, earlier ranshackled (1670s), alteration of ransackled, past participle of ransackle (see ransack). The word seems to have been Scottish.
Reading over this note to an American gentleman, he seemed to take alarm, lest the word ramshackle should be palmed on his country. I take it home willingly, as a Scotticism, and one well applied, as may be afterwards shown. [Robert Gourlay, "General Introduction to a Statistical Account of Upper Canada," London, 1822]Jamieson's "Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language" (1825) has it as a noun meaning "thoughtless, ignorant fellow."
