|
WordWealth:
untrammeled:
'not restricted or hampered'
untrammeled < trammel (See
picture).
tram·mel
 ,
n., v., -meled, -mel·ing
or (esp. Brit.) -melled, -mel·ling.
–n.
1. Usually,
trammels. a hindrance or impediment to free action; restraint:
the trammels of custom. 2. an instrument for drawing
ellipses. 3. Also called tram.
a device used to align or adjust parts of a machine. 4. See
trammel net. 5. a fowling net. 6. a contrivance hung
in a fireplace to support pots or kettles over the fire. 7. a
fetter or shackle, esp. one used in training a horse to amble.
–v.t.
8. to involve or hold
in trammels; restrain. 9. to catch or entangle in or as in a
net. [1325–75; ME
tramayle < MF tramail, var. of tremail
three-mesh net < LL trēmaculum,
equiv. to L trē(s)
THREE
+ macula mesh]
—tram  mel·er;
esp. Brit., trammel·ler,
n.
—Syn.1.drag,
hobble, curb, inhibition. 8.hinder, impede, obstruct,
encumber. (Random
House Webster's, Unabridged).
Look at
Thesaurus
A broad 12 kilometre crescent of white sand curves around the south edge of Lamu island, off the remote north Kenyan coast. Compact, eighteenth-century-built Shela
village sits at the north end, with fantastic seafood, and the beach
is an untrammeled haven. ——
Tom Templeton;
Where to Idle Away the Sands of Time;
10 of the world's great unspoilt beaches;
Guardian, August 31,
2003
That preoccupation extends, of course, far beyond JFK to the rest of his family. A recent example is the exhibit of Jackie Kennedy's clothing that traveled last year from the JFK Library and Museum in Boston to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In
"Costumes From Camelot" (Dec 2001 Atlantic),
Caitlin Flanagan reviewed this traveling exhibit and its accompanying
catalogue. Although aware that the Kennedy family is far from
perfect—"For the cynical, the entire Kennedy enterprise is a kind of
all-you-can-eat buffet of hypocrisy and untrammeled personal
ambition"—she nevertheless admitted that she is not immune to the
star-struck adulation that the family tends to inspire. ——
The Cultural Meaning of the Kennedys;
the Atlantic; Dec 4, 2002
Jefferson, he says, is different, because "the
liberty that Jefferson adored is not a liberty 'combined' with all
those tedious Burkean things, as in
the Constitution, but a wild liberty, absolute, untrammeled, universal. . . ."
"The other Founders saw the Declaration as embodying generalities that would at
a later stage need to be combined with and confined by practical
considerations. But Jefferson saw the principles of the Declaration as
transcendent truths of which he himself, as author of the Declaration, was also
the destined and authoritative interpreter." He was, in Mr. O'Brien's view,
intoxicated with the wild gas of liberty. ——
Douglas L.
Wilson on
'Thomas Jefferson', A counter Point;
the Atlantic; Oct 1996
Look at
Thesaurus in depth
Back index, 'U'
Back index, 'T'
|
Next index, 'V'
>
WordWealth, HOME
iNTERNET
| The Atlantic-Quinion's
coverage
>
Language and Issues
>
Word Court; Debate your word
>
Word Watch
>
Word Improvisation
>
Words:
English from a British viewpoint |
 |
|
