Gambrel
//ˈɡæmbɹəl// name, noun, verb
name, noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 The hind leg of a horse; the hock.
- 2 a gable roof with two slopes on each side and the lower slope being steeper wordnet
- 3 A bar, usually metal, with a central loop and a hook at each end, used to hang a carcass for butchering. dialectal, historical, obsolete
"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"
- 4 A kind of meathook shaped roughly like a horse's hind leg.
- 5 A gambrel roof.
Verb
- 1 To truss or hang up using a gambrel.
"They raised him so, gambreled up by the bones in his cheek."
Proper Noun
- 1 A surname.
Example
More examples"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"
Etymology
Uncertain, perhaps from Old Northern French gamberel, from gambe (“leg”).
Related phrases
More for "gambrel"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.