Today's Word "trammel"
Published in Vocabulary
trammel \TRAM-uhl\ (noun) - 1 : A kind of net for catching birds, fish, etc. 2 : A kind of shackle used for making a horse amble. 3 : Something that impedes activity, progress, or freedom, as a net or shackle. 4 : An iron hook of various forms and sizes, used for handing kettles and other vessels over the fire. 5 : An instrument for drawing ellipses. 6 : An instrument for aligning or adjusting parts of a machine.
(transitive verb) - 1 : To entangle, as in a net; to enmesh. 2 : To hamper; to hinder the activity, progress, or freedom of.
"Is it a dull or uninstructive picture to see a whole people shaking suddenly off the trammels of reason, and running wild after a golden vision, refusing obstinately to believe that it is not real, till, like a deluded hind running after an ignis fatuus, they are plunged into a quagmire?" -- Charles Mackay, 'Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds'
Trammel is from Old French tramail, from Late Latin tremaculum, a kind of net for catching fish, from Latin tres, "three" + macula, "a mesh."
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