manacle

American  

[man-uh-kuhl] / ˈmæn ə kəl /

noun

1. a shackle for the hand; handcuff.

2. Usually manacles. restraints; checks.

---

verb (used with object)

• manacles,
  present (3rd person singular)
• manacled,
  past participle,  past
• manacling
  present participle

1. to handcuff; fetter.

2. to hamper; restrain.

   He was manacled by his inhibitions.

manacle British  

/ ˈmænəkəl /

noun

1. (usually plural) a shackle, handcuff, or fetter, used to secure the hands of a prisoner, convict, etc

---

verb

1. to put manacles on

2. to confine or constrain

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• unmanacled
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Participles

• manacling
  present
• manacled
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• manacle
  simple
• manacles
  simple
• have manacled
  perfect
• has manacled
  perfect
• am manacling
  progressive
• are manacling
  progressive
• is manacling
  progressive
• have been manacling
  perfect progressive
• has been manacling
  perfect progressive

Past

• manacled
  simple
• had manacled
  perfect
• was manacling
  progressive
• were manacling
  progressive
• had been manacling
  perfect progressive

Future

• will manacle
  simple
• will have manacled
  perfect
• will be manacling
  progressive
• will have been manacling
  perfect progressive

Etymology

Origin of manacle

1275–1325; Middle English, variant of manicle < Middle French: handcuff < Latin manicula small hand, handle of a plow. See manus, -i-, -cle ¹

Explanation

If a police officer has to manacle your hands behind your back, you're in big trouble. That's just a fancy way of saying that you've been handcuffed. Used as a noun, manacle is a synonym for shackle, meaning "a metal chain or band, used to fasten someone’s hands or ankles together." You’re more likely to see the noun form of this word in its plural form manacles, since — like socks or mittens — a pair is usually required. (Quite unlike socks or mittens, manacles are not at all comfortable or pleasant to wear.) You can say that someone who has been restrained using manacles has been manacled.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

manacle manacles manacled manacling

Mostly I just fret, worry-beading minor problems and irritations until they form a manacle of woe.

From New York Times ● Jan. 5, 2019

He even got a leg manacle removed so that he could move freely about the courtroom.

From Time Magazine Archive

Within these limitations, the show covers an astonishing range, which should prove to even the most doctrinaire of abstractionists that an attachment to reality is not necessarily a manacle for the mind.

From Time Magazine Archive

Rattleshirt sat scratching at the manacle on his wrist with a cracked yellow fingernail.

From "A Dance with Dragons" by George R. R. Martin

As the werewolf wrenched itself free of the manacle binding it, the dog seized it about the neck and pulled it backward, away from Ron and Pettigrew.

From "Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban" by J.K. Rowling

“He said he’d go to his grave with the manacles of Iraq,” said retired Col.

From Seattle Times ● Mar. 22, 2023

Art, perhaps better than anything else, can do that: liberate us, if fleetingly, imperfectly from the manacles that bind us.

From New York Times ● Aug. 11, 2022

Winters, we can look across the vast eastward miles, and regard with pity the icebound, housebound millions in the manacles of winter.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 29, 2022

In so doing, he has posed the question of what mind-forg'd manacles keep three, British-born, young men enslaved to a pair of unscrupulous builders.

From BBC ● Dec. 15, 2020

Black conjured heavy manacles from thin air; soon Pettigrew was upright again, left arm chained to Lupin’s right, right arm to Ron’s left.

From "Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban" by J.K. Rowling

He stays gruff, of course, but you sense that Ray is as manacled by his authoritarian role as Colin literally is in his hungry, slurping devotion to his master.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 5, 2026

When Martin does depict a full human body, such as the manacled one in the potent “Enslaved,” it’s in the form of a black or brown stick figure with a circular head.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 30, 2020

There were no triumphal demonstrations, in the tradition of ancient Rome, with manacled Russian captives and their plundered treasures paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue.

From Salon ● Mar. 3, 2019

“I am leashed it looks like, manacled; cobwebbed, that’s closer,” she says.

From Slate ● Aug. 9, 2018

She clasped her hands in supplication to the heavens; she presented her wrists crossed, as if manacled.

From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party" by M.T. Anderson

Where is their evidence that manacling our language to past usage is at all helpful or necessary?

From The Guardian ● Jun. 12, 2010

President Johnson held Jefferson Davis in long imprisonment, with the aggravation not only of close confinement and even a temporary manacling, but of a public accusation of complicity in the murder of Lincoln.

From The Negro and the Nation A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement by George Spring Merriam

Flashing his torch round, Tom noticed that the flooring had been worn and chipped away, no doubt in the process of manacling, and scattered about there was a large quantity of loose particles of brick.

From King of the Air Or, To Morocco on an Aeroplane by Herbert Strang

Before this conception we might well shudder, for its irons are secretly manacling our own limbs.

From Monks, Popes, and their Political Intrigues by John Alberger

It was equivalent to putting out a man's eyes, and then asserting boldly that he cannot see; of manacling his ankles, and charging him with the inability to run.

From History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens by George Washington Williams