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Shackle   Listen
verb
Shackle  v. t.  (past & past part. shackled; pres. part. shackling)  
1.
To tie or confine the limbs of, so as to prevent free motion; to bind with shackles; to fetter; to chain. "To lead him shackled, and exposed to scorn Of gathering crowds, the Britons' boasted chief."
2.
Figuratively: To bind or confine so as to prevent or embarrass action; to impede; to cumber. "Shackled by her devotion to the king, she seldom could pursue that object."
3.
To join by a link or chain, as railroad cars. (U. S.)
Shackle bar, the coupling between a locomotive and its tender. (U.S.)
Shackle bolt, a shackle.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Shackle" Quotes from Famous Books



... slave has scarcely been heard and hushed, when from another direction there comes another sharp cry of oppression. Another form of inhumanity [15] lifts its hydra head to forge anew the old fetters; to shackle conscience, stop free speech, slander, vilify; to invite its prey, then turn and refuse the victim a solitary vindication in this most ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... 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, boar-foaming, ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... in nothing that cripples or degrades you. Your first duty is self-culture, self-exaltation: you may not violate this high trust. Yourself is sacred, profane it not. Forge no chains wherewith to shackle your own members. Either subordinate your vocation to your ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... 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 ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... to gerraple with it," said the Hatter, with a valiant shake of his hat. "We're going to grab it by its throat, and shake it down, and shackle it so that in forty years it will become as tame as a fly or any other ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs

... 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 ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... as tools for England to make out of us all the profit she possibly can," they declared. "We are not slaves but free-born Englishmen, and we refuse to obey laws which shackle us and ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy

... handy work, "May the points of our needles prick the 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 of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... he sought 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 ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... at every rope on the pin-rails before he found the halyards. One of them let go the rope in the midst of the hoisting and slipped down to the deck dead; but Saxtorph hammered the others and made them stick by the job. When the fore and main were up, I told him to knock the shackle out of the anchor chain and let her go. I had had myself helped aft to the wheel, where I was going to make a shift at steering. I can't guess how he did it, but instead of knocking the shackle out, down went the second anchor, and there we ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London

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

... balk Thy will with any shackle; Wilt add a harden to thy walk? There! take her without further talk: You're both but ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... 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 enslaved his ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... when he talked of "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 consistent with as perfect sense and expression as could be expected if he was perfectly free from that shackle." Another part of this Essay will convict the following stanza of what every reader will discover ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson

... not clipped the skins of the sacred beasts, I have not injured the gods, I have not calumniated the slave to his master; and so on. The line is not yet clearly drawn between moral and ritual or conventional offences; and moral duty is expressed in a negative form, and appears as a shackle, not as an inspiration. Yet the very great advance has been made here, that divine law watches not only over specially religious matters but over social life, and even over the thoughts of the individual ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... the transfer was completed. The master seldom ill-treated his slaves, except in cases of reiterated disobedience, rebellion, or flight; he could arrest his runaway slaves wherever he could lay his hands on them; he could shackle their ankles, fetter their wrists, and whip them mercilessly. As a rule, he permitted them to marry and bring up a family; he apprenticed their children, and as soon as they knew a trade, he set them ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... where 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 his hand; The bondman of the cloister so All that ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley

... time for which they were condemned, are employed in public works, under a guard of soldiers. At the harbour of Nice, they are hired by ship-masters to bring ballast, and have a small proportion of what they earn, for their own use: the rest belongs to the king. They are distinguished by an iron shackle about one of their legs. The road from Nice to Ville Franche is scarce passable on horseback: a circumstance the more extraordinary, as those slaves, in the space of two or three months, might even make it fit for a carriage, and the king would not be one farthing ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... 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 a great jar on her head, and did that much for him. He was naked. His clothes that the askaris ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... was quickly hoisted in the crane shackle,—Thomas Jefferson sweating manfully at the crab crank,—clamped on the axle of a pair of wagon wheels, cleaned, swabbed, loaded with quarry blasting powder and pieces of broken iron to serve for grape, and trundled out on the pike at the heels ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... skip seemed to forge up-stream to meet him, and he swam savagely until he was in the broken water and something struck his foot. Then he arched his back and dived, groping with his hands. He grasped the slippery side of the skip and felt the shackle loop. With some trouble he got the rope through, and then tried to put his feet on the bottom. They were swept away and he came up gasping, knowing he had made a mistake that might ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... voice, something so determined in those brilliant eyes, that Grenfall felt like looking up the conductor to congratulate him. The dinner was served, and while it was being discussed his fair companion of the drive graphically described the experience of twenty strange minutes in a shackle-down mountain coach. He was surprised to find that she omitted no part, not even the hand clasp or the manner in which she clung to him. His ears burned as he listened to this frank confession, for he expected to hear ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... as it's a wicked hact to take what ain't yours? Don't you know as it's thieving and robbery, and that thieving and robbery leads to prison bars and shackle-chains?" ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol

... 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 ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... she continued her solicitations unremittingly, day after day,[118] month after month, for a whole year, but always without the least success, for Joseph in his chastity did not permit himself even to look upon her, wherefore she resorted to constraint. She had an iron shackle placed upon his chin, and he was compelled to keep his head up and look her in ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... to the catch hooks by means of a light chain. On throwing the handle over, and against the end of the wagon, the crank moves over and below the center, lifting up the catch into a position out of range of action, and from this position it cannot fall except it is released by the shunter. A shackle and links hang from the end of the drawbar for attachment to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various

... iron plug-holder, and a 7 lb. maul, two cold chisels, a hammer and a file, spare washers, and duplicates of the principal bolts, nuts, pins, cotters, &c., a quantity of thick and thin cord, and some tarred line, a fire-bucket, two long crow-bars, a spare coupling-chain, with shackle and hook complete, several wooden wedges, about 2 feet long, 4 or 5 inches wide and 3 inches thick, and, if running long journeys, two ...
— Practical Rules for the Management of a Locomotive Engine - in the Station, on the Road, and in cases of Accident • Charles Hutton Gregory

... not, as a rule, like hard-and-fast rhymes," Pao-ch'ai retorted. "It's evident enough that we can have good verses without them, so what's the use of any rhymes to shackle us? Don't let us imitate that mean lot of people. Let's simply choose our subject and pay no notice to rhymes. Our main object is to see whether we cannot by chance hit upon some well-written ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... prevent the writing, printing, and publishing any news without licence. Mr. Poultney accordingly presented such a bill on the 3rd of April. It was read a first time; but a motion to read it a second time was negatived. (Commons' Journals, xi. 765. 767.) This attempt again to shackle the press seems ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850 • Various

... the freeman, but man made the slave, Forcing his brother the shackle to wear; But all those fetters are loosed in the grave, King, priest, and serf meeting equally there; Here, too, and now, in these swift latter days, Freedom all round is humanity's right; Thought, speech, and action, enfranchised all ways, Eager ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... which are inevitable and self-perpetuating, are weakness, disease, insanity. If one violates gravitation he is dashed in pieces; if he trifles with microbes their infinitesimal grasp will be like a shackle of steel. No one can get outside the physical universe and ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford

... got the buoy with a length of rope on the chain ready to slip," Ben said, "and a spar lashed to the hawser. Now, Tom, let the chain out; I will jump below and knock out the shackle. Now, captain, if one or two of your men will lend us a hand to get up some canvas, we shall be out of it all the sooner. And please get them all except the women out of the cabin, and put them aft. We want her head well up for ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty

... cashiered this self-will of ours, which did but shackle and confine our soules, our wills shall then become truly free, being widened and enlarged to the extent of God's own will."—Cudworth, Sermon before the House of Commons, ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris

... precedents, we have examples of persons punished for things less criminal than some pieces which have been lately represented; a new law must, therefore unnecessary; and in the present case it cannot be unnecessary without being dangerous. Every unnecessary restraint is a fetter upon the legs, is a shackle upon the hands, of liberty. One of the greatest blessings we enjoy, one of the greatest blessings a people can enjoy, is liberty. But every good in this life has its allay of evil. Licentiousness is the allay of liberty. It is an ebullition, an excrescence; it is a speck upon the eye of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... 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 of the ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... According to Mr. Lecky, human reason is the only factor of history. The agency of the Holy Spirit is ignored. Elaborate creeds and liturgical services are a barrier to the mind's progress, because they shackle the intellect by impure traditions. Rationalism is the only relief of these later times. "Its central conception," says our author, "is the elevation of conscience into a position of supreme authority as the religious organ, a verifying faculty discriminating between ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... making a distinction between these fundamentals and the ordinary subjects of law-making, and accordingly they, and the people who gave their approval to the Constitution, deliberately arrogated to themselves the power to shackle future majorities in regard to the essentials of the system of government which they brought into being. They did this with a clear consciousness of the object which they had in view—the stability of the new government and the protection of certain fundamental rights ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin

... plenty o' brass! It's grand to be able to spend A trifle sometimes on a glass For yorsen, or sometimes for a friend To be able to bury yor neive Up to th' shackle i' silver an' gowd An', 'baght pinchin', be able to save A wee bit for ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, First Series - To Which Is Added The Cream Of Wit And Humour From His Popular Writings • John Hartley

... Crewe's explanation of his theories had come lamely to a halt. Austen was aware of the renewed scrutiny of Mrs. Pomfret, and then Mr. Crewe, whom no social manacles could shackle, had broken past her and made his way to them. He continued to treat the ground on which ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... "I stood by to shackle up an Angari in case he should demand it, but by God's favour he was too far fevered to ask for one. It is quite true he signed the papers. It is quite true he saw the money put away in the safe—two hundred and ten English pounds and it is quite ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling

... I shall close by saying: 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 ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.

... and had charge of working the cables on the gun-deck when anchoring. Going into a port where the water was very deep—Rio de Janeiro, I believe—the chain cables "got away," as the expression is; control was lost, and shackle after shackle tore out of the hawse-holes, leaping and thumping, rattling and roaring, stirring a lot of dust besides. Indeed, the violent friction of iron against iron in such cases not infrequently generates a stream of sparks. The weight of twenty fathoms of this linked ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... GAMMON-SHACKLE. A sort of triangular ring formed on the end of a gammon-plate, for the gammoning lashing or chain ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... world a Stuart and Nassau. Hath Nature (strange and wild conceit of pride!) Distinguished thee from all her sons beside? Doth virtue in thy bosom brighter glow, Or from a spring more pure doth action flow? Is not thy soul bound with those very chains Which shackle us? or is that Self, which reigns O'er kings and beggars, which in all we see Most strong and sovereign, only weak in thee? 190 Fond man, believe it not; experience tells 'Tis not thy virtue, but thy pride rebels. Think, (and for once lay by thy lawless pen) Think, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... 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

... differ in 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 ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker



Words linked to "Shackle" :   pinion, chains, ball and chain, confine, irons, constraint, hold, hobble, manacle, bar, restraint, padlock, trammel



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