Other forms: shackles
A shackle is a metal ring locked round a prisoner's limb. In shackles, strike off the shackles, leg shackles.
The figurative plural does most of the work now, where the shackles of debt or of tradition are anything that holds somebody back. In sailing a shackle is a simple U-shaped link with a pin, and it is everywhere on a boat.
1nounshackleA metal ring locked round a prisoner's limb.
“The prisoner's ankles were bound with heavy iron shackles.”
shackle is a restraint.
Old English sceacul names a fetter, from a Germanic root; the sailing sense came from the same shape.
Proto-Indo-European
*skeg-
Proto-Germanic
*skakulaz — shackle
Proto-West Germanic
*skakul
Old English
sċacul
Middle English
shakel
English, today
shackle
Built from
From Middle English shakel, schakkyl, schakle (“a fetter, shackle; coupling used to connect a plough or wagon to a draft chain”), from Old English sċacul, sċeacel, sċeacul (“fetter, shackle”), from Proto-West Germanic skakul, from Proto-Germanic skakulaz (“shackle”), possibly from skakaną (“to shake; to swing; to escape”), from Proto-Indo-European skeg-, skek- (“to shake; to stir”). However, this is doubted by the Oxford English Dictionary because skeg-, skek-* lack the meaning of attaching or fastening. length (“length of cable or chain equal to 12½ or 15 fathoms”) derives from the original distance between two shackles (nautical) connecting lengths of cable or chain together. 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA