trammel

American  

[tram-uhl] / ˈtræm əl /

noun

1. Usually trammels a hindrance or impediment to free action; restraint.

   the trammels of custom.

   Synonyms:

   inhibition, hobble, curb, drag

2. an instrument for drawing ellipses.

3. Also called tram.  a device used to align or adjust parts of a machine.

4. trammel net.

5. a fowling net.

6. a contrivance hung in a fireplace to support pots or kettles over the fire.

7. a fetter or shackle, especially one used in training a horse to amble.

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verb (used with object)

trammeled, trammeling, trammelled, trammelling

1. to involve or hold in trammels; restrain.

   Synonyms:

   obstruct, impede, hinder, encumber

2. to catch or entangle in or as in a net.

trammel British  

/ ˈtræməl /

noun

1. (often plural) a hindrance to free action or movement

2. Also called: trammel net.  a fishing net in three sections, the two outer nets having a large mesh and the middle one a fine mesh

3. rare a fowling net

4. a fetter or shackle, esp one used in teaching a horse to amble

5. a device for drawing ellipses consisting of a flat sheet of metal, plastic, or wood having a cruciform slot in which run two pegs attached to a beam. The free end of the beam describes an ellipse

6. (sometimes plural) another name for beam compass

7. Also called: tram.  a gauge for setting up machines correctly

8. a device set in a fireplace to support cooking pots

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verb

1. to hinder or restrain

2. to catch or ensnare

3. to produce an accurate setting of (a machine adjustment), as with a trammel

Other Word Forms

• trammeler
  noun
• trammeller
  noun
• untrammeled
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of trammel

First recorded in 1325–75; Middle English tramayle, from Middle French tramail, variant of tremail “three-mesh net,” from Late Latin trēmaculum, equivalent to Latin trē(s) “three” + macula “mesh”; see also three

Explanation

To trammel is to hamper or hinder — in other words, to keep someone from doing something. People in your neighborhood might lobby for speed bumps in order to trammel speeding cars. When you use trammel as a verb, you're either talking about limiting or catching, like when a fisherman trammels cod in a net. As a noun, a trammel is some kind of restraint. There's the trammel that's used by horse trainers to restrain a horse and slow its gait, and the trammel that's basically a fishing net. The latter is the original meaning of trammel, from the Latin roots tri-, "three," and macula, "mesh."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

trammel trammeled trammeling trammelled trammelling

In addition to being noisy, the superwide rubber can trammel a bit over patched and imperfect highway surfaces.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 25, 2025

When he brings his cattle to eat the alfalfa, they will spread their waste across the fields and trammel old vegetation into the earth.

From Seattle Times ● Oct. 12, 2021

Federal courts, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the majority, should interrogate the true intentions and effects of laws that seem suspiciously eager to trammel constitutional rights.

From Slate ● Aug. 1, 2016

No such precepts trammel Thornton Wilder, apparently indifferent to getting his point across.

From Time Magazine Archive

The Custom House does not seriously trammel the convenience of traders between this country and the Continent, and it was found endurable when the variance between England and Ireland was more formidable than now.

From The New Irish Constitution by Morgan, J. H.

Here had at long, long last arrived the day when LSU, that jalopy long trammeled in primitive offense and thumping defeats, came to Alabama and stormed up and down the field like some attacking symphony.

From Washington Post ● Nov. 9, 2019

This doctrine trammeled minimum wage and maximum hour rules, as well as laws safeguarding workers’ right to unionize.

From Slate ● Jun. 29, 2018

He also doesn’t want his religious liberty trammeled.

From Slate ● Jun. 26, 2015

Much of this ground has been well-trod, not to say trammeled.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 29, 2014

Youth and social approval allied themselves with me and we trammeled memories of slights and insults.

From "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou

The law’s call to protect places “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man” has always been poignant, and our enthusiasm for trammeling seems greater every year.

From Slate ● Aug. 29, 2014

Even then, before anyone had discerned the global fingerprints of PCBs or climate change, the founders of the Wilderness Society realized that most places had some history of human habitation; most places had experienced some sort of trammeling.

From Slate ● Aug. 29, 2014

But for me, the darker scenario in 1984 is the reimagining of the English language into Newspeak, and the trammeling of thought it implies.

From The Guardian ● Aug. 14, 2012

Enjoyment means some trammeling, however, and at times Hoagland seems almost apologetic that his body must accompany his senses into the wilderness.

From Time Magazine Archive

Act after act was laid upon everything connected with wool, so that it is only extraordinary that, under such restrictive trammeling, the trade survived at all.

From Rides on Railways by Sidney, Samuel

Once my children learned to speak, it was curious to observe that their own anxieties trammelled along similar lines, the necessity of attaching a cause – any cause – to their fears.

From The Guardian ● Sep. 16, 2019

The other patients in the facility seemed beaten down by the irreversibility of their situation, but Fidyka projected an intense, if trammelled, physicality.

From The New Yorker ● Jan. 25, 2016

She particularly likes fictional treatments of "restraint", emotions trammelled or kept down, as when marking, in Middlemarch, "a delicate chapter, low-keyed emotions but minutely traced".

From The Guardian ● Apr. 2, 2010

Some were talking quietly to each other, some re-tying their laces, others just staring down at their feet as they trammelled the mud.

From "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro

He was at first trammelled by instructions from the Maryland Assembly the members of which hoped for peace without recourse to arms.

From Sages and Heroes of the American Revolution by Judson, L. Carroll

But in his later works he swung clear of these trammelling archaisms, and produced brilliant and memorable compositions.

From Dürer Artist-Biographies by Sweetser, M. F.

Rev. Mr. Thatcher wrote in 1690 of teaching a mare to amble by cross-spanning, and again by trammelling.

From Customs and Fashions in Old New England by Earle, Alice Morse

He was ragged, tanned, dusty, neither shoes nor coat trammelling his independence; and he had evidently entered the garden through the gap in the hedge.

From The Two Vanrevels by Tarkington, Booth

There is so marked an absence of carving that it seems as if ornamentation would have been weakening and trammelling.

From Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 by Rose, Elise Whitlock

But the deeds of the man who is really free have no such trammelling effects, for they are not prompted by desire nor directed to an object.

From Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 2 by Eliot, Charles, Sir