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Shackle   Listen
noun
Shackle  n.  
1.
Something which confines the legs or arms so as to prevent their free motion; specifically, a ring or band inclosing the ankle or wrist, and fastened to a similar shackle on the other leg or arm, or to something else, by a chain or a strap; a gyve; a fetter. "His shackles empty left; himself escaped clean."
2.
Hence, that which checks or prevents free action. "His very will seems to be in bonds and shackles."
3.
A fetterlike band worn as an ornament. "Most of the men and women... had all earrings made of gold, and gold shackles about their legs and arms."
4.
A link or loop, as in a chain, fitted with a movable bolt, so that the parts can be separated, or the loop removed; a clevis.
5.
A link for connecting railroad cars; called also drawlink, draglink, etc.
6.
The hinged and curved bar of a padlock, by which it is hung to the staple.
Shackle joint (Anat.), a joint formed by a bony ring passing through a hole in a bone, as at the bases of spines in some fishes.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Shackle" Quotes from Famous Books



... to shackle public opinion—the fearful hydra to all ambitious aspirants—to know all secrets of the time and states, and render one half of the great nations he held in his grasp spies upon the other! The most profligate principles of Machiavel sink into obscurity when contrasted ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... forty slavegirls laid hold on him, whilst she hurriedly snatched up the ring from the cushion and rubbed it; whereupon Abu al-Sa'adat presented himself, saying, "Adsum, at thy service O my mistress." Cried she, "Take up yonder Infidel and clap him in jail and shackle him heavily." So he took him and throwing him into the Prison of Wrath[FN98] returned and reported, "I have laid him in limbo." Quoth she, "Whither wentest thou with my father and my husband?"; and quoth he, "I cast them down in the Desert Quarter." Then cried she, "I command thee to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... cannonarchy, would he? Well, a cannonarchy was exactly what they desired, provided its powers should be directed, not against foreign monarchs, but against domestic Republicans. That a government of which he should be the head would disregard the constitution, would shackle the press, would limit speech, and would suppress the Assembly, was an argument in his favor, that, to their minds, was irresistible. Had they thought of the Russian War, and of the Italian War, and of the extinction of the Pope's temporal power, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various

... with the deaf and dumb, and blind, and roofless even then. It was decided by government, which is the next most irresponsible instrument to lightning, to transfer the late inmates of the asylum to a remantled barrack in the salubrious Ceylon hills; and they were put aboard a ram-shackle, single-screw steamer named the Nerissa. ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... loves God who hates his kind, Who tramples on his Brother's heart and soul. Who seeks to shackle, cloud or fog the mind By fears of Hell has ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel

... rises again to breathe, and probably gets a similar dose.—Gun harpoon. A weapon used for the same purpose as the preceding, but it is fired out of a gun, instead of being thrown by hand; it is made entirely of steel, and has a chain or long shackle attached to it, to which the whale-line is fastened. Greener's harpoon-gun is a kind of wall-piece fixed in a crutch, which steps into the bow-bollard of the whale-boat. The harpoon projects about four inches beyond the muzzle. It consists of its ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... Charlotte Maria Fennell, belonged to a family which gave officers to the British Navy—one of them serving directly under Nelson—and clergy to the Church of England. The Fennells were related to the Bronte sisters through the latter's mother; and one was closely connected with the Shackle who founded the original John Bull newspaper. Those, then, were my kinsfolk on the maternal side. My mother presented my father with seven children, of whom I was the sixth, being also the fourth son. I was born on November ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... conscience does not bind, No other law shall shackle me? Slave to myself I will not be, Nor shall my future actions be confined By my own present mind. Who by resolves and vows engaged does stand For days that yet belong to fate, Does like an unthrift mortgage his estate Before it falls into ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley

... criticisms of others, and though in thus dealing with articles submitted to him he frequently erased what the writers considered some of their best criticisms, he never lost their friendship and support. He disliked incurring any obligation which might in any degree shackle the expression of his free opinions. In conjunction with Mr. Murray, he laid down a rule, which as we have already seen was advocated by Scott, and to which no exception has ever been made, that every writer ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... masts being shivered from top to bottom, and sometimes only within and the outside whole, but among the rest Sir W. Rider did tell a story of his own knowledge, that a Genoese gaily in Leghorn Roads was struck by thunder, so as the mast was broke a-pieces, and the shackle upon one of the slaves was melted clear off of his leg without hurting his leg. Sir William went on board the vessel, and would have contributed towards the release of the slave whom Heaven had thus set free, but he ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... solemn oath to follow it. This is to be a slave among the boundless dominions of nature, where all are free. As the wind bloweth wherever it listeth, so move the moods of men's minds, when there is nought to shackle them, and when the burden of their cares has been dropt, that for a while they may walk on air, and feel that they ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... Would swell too high the horrors of our song. Hunger and thirst to work our woe combine, And mouldy bread, and flesh of rotten swine; The mangled carcase and the battered brain; The doctor's poison, and the captain's cane; The soldier's musquet, and the steward's debt: The evening shackle, and ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... initiate, institute, originate, start, found. Belief, faith, persuasion, conviction, tenet, creed. Belittle, decry, depreciate, disparage. Bind, secure, fetter, shackle, gyve. Bit, jot, mite, particle, grain, atom, speck, mote, whit, iota, tittle, scintilla. Bluff, blunt, outspoken, downright, brusk, curt, crusty. Boast, brag, vaunt, vapor, gasconade. Body, corpse, remains, relics, carcass, cadaver, corpus. Bombastic, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... 50 cents. Genuine ebony handle, brass lining, german silver bolsters and shield. Large cutting blade can be opened without using the fingernail. Shackle ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... "that great turn" in the stanza just quoted. "But then the writer must take care that the difficulty is overcome. That is, he must make rhyme consist with as perfect sense and expression, as could be expected if he was perfectly free from that shackle." ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... slaveholder's conscience." Some of the reports of these Societies exhibit not only considerable talent, but a deep sense of religious duty, and a determination to persevere through evil as well as good report, until every scourge, and every shackle, is buried under the feet ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... of words. Of this national characteristic the writings of Petrarch are almost totally destitute. His sonnets indeed, from their subject and nature, and his Latin Poems, from the restraints which always shackle one who writes in a dead language, cannot fairly be received in evidence. But his Triumphs absolutely required the exercise of this talent, and ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... distressing influence, but not the only one. To the younger Southerners who had grown up in the heated atmosphere of the political feud about slavery, to whom the threat of disunion as a means to save slavery had been like a household word, and who had always regarded the bond of Union as a shackle to be cast off, the thought of being "reunited" to "the enemy," the hated Yankee, was distasteful in the extreme. Such sentiments of the "unconquered" found excited and exciting expression in the Southern press, and were largely entertained by many Southern clergymen of different denominations ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various

... cried Sir Rowland, rising and drawing his sword; "do you think you can shackle my free ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... if so I may call you, that I wish to shackle that liberty you adorn while you assume: but which, if not greater, as you rightly observe, than that possessed by the Roman women, must at least be accompanied by great circumspection, when arrogated by one unmarried. Continue to draw crowds of the gay, the brilliant, the ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... children of men, safe from the pitiless storms of adverse environment without which are so harshly violent to the morbidly sensitive and unstable insane mind; an age in which he who strikes a needless shackle from human form or heart, or removes a cause of human torture, psychical or physical, is regarded as a greater moral hero than he who, by storm or strategy of war taketh a resisting fortress; an age when the Chiarugis and Pinels, the Yorks ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various

... He was looking at her with what Miss Annabel called his beautiful smile. "You can't possibly believe I want things to be right for you. But it's true. I mean to make them righter than they are, too. But I don't believe we can shackle ourselves together. I don't ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... and four in the morning of the 30th, the Bolabola man, whom I had in confinement, found means to make his escape out' of the ship. He carried with him the shackle of the bilbo-bolt that was about his leg, which was taken from him, as soon as he got on shore, by one of the chiefs, and given to Omai, who came on board very early in the morning, to acquaint me that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... accept!) saith, 'There are three kinds of women, firstly the true believing, Heaven fearing, love full and fruit full, who helpeth her mate against fate, not helping fate against her mate; secondly, she who loveth her children but no more and, lastly, she who is a shackle Allah setteth on the neck of whom He will.' Men be also three: the wise when he exerciseth his own judgement; the wiser who, when befalleth somewhat whereof he knoweth not the issue, seeketh folk of good counsel and acteth by their advice; and the unwise irresolute ignoring the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... counteract the other impending danger as well. With a large accession of legitimized voters working in accord with England's desire for peace and progress, that good influence would be potent, first to shackle Bond action and ultimately to reduce it to Colonial limits. The Transvaal would then no longer be the giant ally, the arsenal, and the treasury of the Afrikaner Bond, and that organisation would then be ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas

... august Virginia, Proud Massachusetts, and proud Maine, Planting the trees that would march and train On, in his name to the great Pacific, Like Birnam wood to Dunsinane, Johnny Appleseed swept on, Every shackle gone, Loving every sloshy brake, Loving every skunk and snake, Loving every leathery weed, Johnny Appleseed, Johnny Appleseed, Master and ruler of the unicorn-ramping forest, The tiger-mewing forest, The rooster-trumpeting, ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... shattered to pieces. So, we may now say, without bitterness and almost without reproach, so may fall and shiver to pieces, every code, in every land beneath the sun, which impiously attempts to shackle conscience, or endows an exclusive caste with the rights and franchises which ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... of hanging saws by means of a weighted lever, like a Roman steelyard. A cross-shaft affixed above the saws to the cornice of the main frame carried a lever, weighted at one end and provided with a hook or shackle at the other for engagement with the saw buckle. In using this apparatus the blades were strained one at a time by linking the lever to the buckle and then adjusting the movable weight until the desired tension was acquired, ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... utterance peculiarly a quintessence of himself. Especially in the narrative pieces—which are often Wessex novels distilled into a wine-glass, such as "Rose-Ann," and "The Vampirine Fair"—he allows no considerations of what the reader may think "nice" or "pleasant" to shackle his sincerity or his determination; and it is therefore to Time's Laughingstocks that the reader who wishes to become intimately acquainted with Mr. Hardy as a moralist most frequently recurs. We notice here more than ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... catch, latch, bolt, latchet[obs3], tag; tooth; hook, hook and eye; lock, holdfast[obs3], padlock, rivet; anchor, grappling iron, trennel[obs3], stake, post. cement, glue, gum, paste, size, wafer, solder, lute, putty, birdlime, mortar, stucco, plaster, grout; viscum[obs3]. shackle, rein &c. (means of restraint) 752; prop &c. (support) 215. V. bridge over, span; connect &c. 43; hang ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... their arrogance, their venality, and their shameful disregard of the Constitution. In short, he seemed bent on imposing a tyrannical yoke, hard to be endured, and to punish unlawfully those who resisted it, or even murmured against it. He would shackle the press, and muzzle the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... Union, is something that no one can do with impunity. In fact, so clear and so clean, as well as so bold and striking, is the record of Chase and his associates, beginning in 1840 and continuing down until the last shackle was stricken from the last bondsman's limbs, that even the shadow of the ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume

... drove the rivet into the shackle on his left arm, a spurt of bruised blood from the old Mexican War wound ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon

... quivering face and saw in it, dimly, the face of the girl in his locket, not a mere outward semblance this time but the soul of Molly Weston, reaching out to him across the years. Her light touch on his arm was the very shackle of fate. Her glance claimed him. Nothing that she had done could modify that claim—the terrible claim of weakness upon the strength which has ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... of wire, this being lighter, and offering less windage than hemp-rigging of the same strength; but, in order to counteract its rigidity and give play to the spars, we adopted the expedient of connecting the deadeyes to the chain-plates by a bolt and shackle arrangement, interposing a thick india-rubber washer between the shackle and the bolt-head. This plan answered most admirably, and I would strongly recommend it to all users of wire-rigging. I am confident that, in a fresh breeze and a chopping sea, we gained fully a knot per hour ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood

... assistant went tuaitheal (i.e. against the course of the sun), the old man was ready to come down and thrash him. On coming to a house the visitor should go round it deiseal to secure luck in the object of his visit. After milking a cow the dairy-maid should strike it deiseal with the shackle, saying 'out and home' (mach 'us dachaigh). This secures its safe return. The word is from deas, right-hand, and iul, direction, and of itself contains no allusion to the sun." Compare M. Martin, "Description ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... revenue necessary to support the King's Government, religion, schools, and to reward public services, should be raised without such oppressive taxes as would oppress the natives, and shackle their industry. ...
— Speeches of His Majesty Kamehameha IV. To the Hawaiian Legislature • Kamehameha IV

... the Vizier, 'Hear him! is not that a fair simulation?' So he called to the guard, 'Shackle him!' When that was done, he ordered the house to be sacked, and the women and the slaves he divided for a spoil, but he reserved Bhanavar to himself: and lo! twice she burst away from them that held her to hang ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... to honest hands the money that is won by violing, and tabouring, and toe tripping, and perhaps worse pastimes. I tell you plainly, mistress, I am not to be fooled. I am ready to take you to any place of safety you can name, for my promise is as strong as an iron shackle. But you cannot persuade me that you do not know what earth to make for. You are not so young in your trade as not to know there are hostelries in every town, much more in a city like Perth, where such as you may be harboured for your money, if you cannot find some gulls, more ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... which a true physician cannot fail to acquire. And if I know anything of you, you would have romantically said, had you seen the letter at first, and understood its covert intention, 'Let me not shackle the choice of the woman I love, and to whom an alliance so coveted in the eyes of the world might, if she were left ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... who were to search our belongings tried to induce us to hurry, but we insisted on seeing the iron ring riveted to Kazimoto's neck. The ring had a shackle on it, and through that they passed the long chain that held him prisoner in the midst of a gang of forty men. Nobody washed the wounds on his back. We bought water from a woman who was passing with ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... evening to Heaven! Full of poetry and feeling and glad associations, it is here anticipated with joy, and leaves a pleasant memory behind it. We may laugh at such simple festivals at home, and prefer to shake ourselves loose from every shackle that bears the rust of the Past, but we would certainly be happier if some of these beautiful old customs were better honored. They renew the bond of feeling between families and friends, and strengthen their kindly sympathy; even life-long friends require occasions of this kind to freshen ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... government by the people where half of them are allowed no voice in its organization and control.... God speed the day when not only in all the States of the Union and in all the Territories, but everywhere, woman shall stand before the law freed from the last shackle which has been riveted upon her by tyranny, and the last disability which has been imposed upon her by ignorance; not only in respect to the right of suffrage, but in every other respect the peer and equal of ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... had been confined entirely apart, had gone together. One of the counts in the unwritten indictments against McDowell was that its officers and men had lionized the dangerous Indian they were bidden to hold under careful guard, had held him without bond or shackle in a vacant room of the hospital, until that very day, when, stung by an inspector's comment, Brown ordered him at last into confinement with Sanchez, who was shackled to a post in the prison room. ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... compensation that the lad so driven forth from human tents should become the father of wild Arabian men, to whom the air of cities is poison, who work without any tool, and on whose limbs no conqueror has ever yet been able to rivet shackle or chain. Then there are Abraham's grandchildren, Jacob and Esau—the former, I confess, no favourite of mine. His, up at least to his closing years, when parental affection and strong sorrow softened him, was a character not amiable. ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... his birth the Duke de Gramont regarded as a positive misfortune, and daily lamented the burden of his own nobility, for it was a shackle that enfeebled and ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... My Honor's at the stake, which to defeate I must produce my power. Heere, take her hand, Proud scornfull boy, vnworthie this good gift, That dost in vile misprision shackle vp My loue, and her desert: that canst not dreame, We poizing vs in her defectiue scale, Shall weigh thee to the beame: That wilt not know, It is in Vs to plant thine Honour, where We please to haue it grow. Checke thy contempt: Obey ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... he did not obtain from the states-general what he demanded, that is, the money he wanted; and the states required of him administrative reforms, sound enough at bottom, but suggested by the Duke of Guise with an interested object, and calculated to shackle the kingly authority even more than could be done by Guise himself directly. At the same time that Guise was urging on the states-general in this path, he demanded to be made constable, not by the king any ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... character, but they are mostly uncertain in temper during a period varying from two to four months every year. At such occurrences of disturbance the animal requires careful treatment, and the chains which shackle the fore legs should be of undoubted quality. Some elephants remain passive throughout the year, while others appear to be thoroughly demented, and, although at other seasons harmless, would, when "must," destroy their ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... where conscience does not bind, No other law shall shackle me; Slave to myself I ne'er will be; Nor shall my future actions be confined By my ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill



Words linked to "Shackle" :   confine, trammel, ball and chain, hamper, manacle, bar, handcuff, constraint, padlock, cuff, irons, restrain, chains, fetter



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