ramshackle
/ˈɹæmˌʃæk.əl/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.43 in modern English
21
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
3
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Badly or carelessly organized.
Example Sentences
- "They stayed in a ramshackle cabin on the beach."
- "Steady old Curés come jolting past, now and then, in such ramshackle, rusty, musty, clattering coaches as no Englishman would believe in;[…]"
- "There came […] my lord the cardinal, in his ramshackle coach."
- "I called for the cheeses, and took them away in a cab. It was a ramshackle affair, dragged along by a knock-kneed, broken-winded somnambulist, which his owner, in a moment of enthusiasm, during conversation, referred to as a horse."
- "A ramshackle old empire. (of Austria-Hungary)."
- "The villa was a roomy white house, which, as is the case with most continental houses, looked to an English eye frail, ramshackle, and absurdly frivolous, more like a pagoda in a tea-garden than a place where one slept."
Etymology
First attested in 1830, a back-formation from ramshackled, from ransackled, past participle of ransackle (“to ransack”), frequentative of Middle English ransaken (“to pillage”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: ransaken
Usage
Inflected Forms
more ramshackle (comparative)
most ramshackle (superlative)
ramshackles (present, singular)
ramshackling (participle, present)
ramshackled (participle, past)
ramshackled (past)