gambrel

plural gambrels

1. The hind leg of a horse; the hock.
2. dialectalhistoricalobsoleteA 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.

   Synonyms: gambrel hook

4. architectureA gambrel roof.

present singular third person gambrels · US participle present gambreling · UK participle present gambrelling · US participle past gambreled · US past gambreled · UK participle past gambrelled · UK past gambrelled

1. To truss or hang up using a gambrel.

   They raised him so, gambreled up by the bones in his cheek.

   1979, Cormac McCarthy, Suttree, Random House, page 9

   1 more example

   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)

plural Gambrels

1. A surname.