Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To mutilate; hamstring; cut away.
  • To cut out the balls of the feet of (dogs), so as to render them unfit for hunting.
  • To walk lame; limp: in this sense usually hammel, hammle.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb obsolete To hamstring.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb obsolete, transitive To mutilate; hamstring; cut away.
  • verb transitive To cut out the balls of the feet of (dogs) so as to render them unfit for hunting.
  • verb intransitive To walk lame; limp.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English hamelen, from Old English hamelian ("to hamstring, mutilate"), from Proto-Germanic *hamalōnan, *hamlōnan (“to mutilate”), from Proto-Indo-European *kem- (“mutilated, hornless”). Cognate with German hammeln, hämmeln ("to geld"), Icelandic hamla ("to mutilate, maim"), Dutch hamel ("wether").

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word hamble.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.