Noun
gambrel (plural gambrels)
- The hind leg of a horse; the hock.
- (chiefly historical and obsolete outside dialects) A bar, usually metal, with a central loop and a hook at each end, used to hang a carcass for butchering.
1997, Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain, London: Hodder and Stoughton, page 307: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
- A kind of meathook shaped roughly like a horse's hind leg.
- Synonym: gambrel hook
- (US, architecture) A gambrel roof.
Translations
roof
- Finnish: taitekatto (fi)
- French: toit à deux pentes m
- Hungarian: nyeregtető (hu)
- Serbo-Croatian: krov sa dva nagiba
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Verb
gambrel (third-person singular simple present gambrels, present participle gambrelling or gambreling, simple past and past participle gambrelled or gambreled)
- To truss or hang up using a gambrel.
1979, Cormac McCarthy, Suttree, Random House, page 9:They raised him so, gambreled up by the bones in his cheek.
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):And meet me; or I'll box you while I have you, And carry you gambril'd thither like a mutton