Dictionary

gambrel en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /ˈɡæmbɹəl/
• (US) audio

Etymology

Uncertain, perhaps from Old Northern French gamberel, from gambe (“leg”).

Meanings

1. The hind leg of a horse; the hock.
2. (dialectal, historical, obsolete) A bar, usually metal, with a central loop and a hook at each end, used to hang a carcass for butchering.
   • Within two hours the hog - killed, scalded, and scraped of its hair - was hanging pale from a big tree limb by a gambrel stick run through the tendons of its hind feet 1997, Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain, London: Hodder and Stoughton, page 307:
3. A kind of meathook shaped roughly like a horse's hind leg.
4. A gambrel roof.

Forms

Deriveds

gambrel-roofed · gambrel roof

Synonyms

gambrel hook

Translations (4)

hu nyeregtető (roof) · sh krov sa dva nagiba (roof) · fi taitekatto (roof) · fr toit à deux pentes (roof)

gambrel en · VERB

Pronunciation

• /ˈɡæmbɹəl/
• (US) audio

Etymology

Uncertain, perhaps from Old Northern French gamberel, from gambe (“leg”).

Meanings

1. To truss or hang up using a gambrel.
   • And meet me; or I'll box you while I have you, And carry you gambril'd thither like a mutton c. 1615–1616, Thomas Middleton, John Fletcher, “The Nice Valour, or, The Passionate Mad-man”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1647, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):
   • They raised him so, gambreled up by the bones in his cheek. 1979, Cormac McCarthy, Suttree, Random House, page 9:

Forms