ramshackle

English

WOTD – 2 June 2007

Etymology

First attested 1830, back-formation from ramshackled, from ransackled, past participle of ransackle (“to ransack”), frequentative of Middle English ransaken (“to pillage”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈɹæmˌʃæk.əl/, enPR: rămʹshăk'əl

• Audio (US):

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• Audio (General Australian):

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Adjective

ramshackle (comparative more ramshackle, superlative most ramshackle)

1. In disrepair or disorder; poorly maintained; lacking upkeep, usually of buildings or vehicles.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:ramshackle

   They stayed in a ramshackle cabin on the beach.

   • 1846, Charles Dickens, Pictures from Italy, London: […] Bradbury & Evans, […], →OCLC:

     Steady old Curés come jolting past, now and then, in such ramshackle, rusty, musty, clattering coaches as no Englishman would believe in; […]

   • 1854, Arthur Pendennis [pseudonym; William Makepeace Thackeray], The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family, volume I, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], →OCLC, page 347:

     There came […] my lord the cardinal, in his ramshackle coach.

   • 1889, Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat […] ‎^[1]:

     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.

   • 1914, David Lloyd George, (Please provide the book title or journal name):

     A ramshackle old empire. (of Austria-Hungary).

   • 1915, Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out, London: Duckworth & Co., […], →OCLC:

     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.

   • 1915, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter XXXVIII, in Of Human Bondage, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, →OCLC:

     When they got out of the Gare du Nord, and trundled along the cobbled streets in a ramshackle, noisy cab, it seemed to him that he was breathing a new air so intoxicating that he could hardly restrain himself from shouting aloud.

2. Badly or carelessly organized.
   • 2012 September 7, Dominic Fifield, “England start World Cup campaign with five-goal romp against Moldova”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:

     So ramshackle was the locals' attempt at defence that, with energetic wingers pouring into the space behind panicked full-backs and centre-halves dizzied by England's movement, it was cruel to behold at times.

   • 2022 October 5, David Wallace-Wells, “Progressives Should Rally Around a Clean Energy Construction Boom”, in The New York Times‎^[3]:

     The alliance that pushed the Inflation Reduction Act into law in August was always a somewhat fragile and ramshackle one: Green New Dealers and the coal-state senator Joe Manchin, carbon-capture geeks and environmental justice warriors, all herded together in the sort of big-tent play you get with a 50-50 Senate and one party functionally indifferent on climate.

Translations

in disrepair or disorder

• Bulgarian: разнебитен (bg) (raznebiten), паянтов (bg) (pajantov)
• Catalan: ruïnós
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 破舊的／破旧的 (zh) (pòjiù de), 破敗的／破败的 (zh) (pòbài de), 毀壞的／毁坏的 (zh) (huǐhuài de)

• Dutch: bouwvallig (nl) (of buildings), gammel (nl)
• Finnish: ränsistynyt (of building), rähjäinen (fi), rämä (of vehicle)
• French: délabré (fr)
• German: baufällig (de) (buildings), klapprig (de), marode (de)
• Hungarian: rozoga (hu), rozzant (hu)
• Italian: diroccante (it), traballante (it), pericolante (it), cadente (it), sgangherato (it) m, malandato (it) m
• Japanese: いやしい (ja) (iyashii)
• Maori: karukaru
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: falleferdig

  Nynorsk: falleferdig

• Persian: لکنتی (fa) (lakanti)
• Polish: rozpadający się m, rozklekotany m
• Portuguese: malcuidado
• Russian: разваливающийся (ru) (razvalivajuščijsja), ве́тхий (ru) (vétxij)
• Ukrainian: напівзруйнований m (napivzrujnovanyj), напіврозвалений m (napivrozvalenyj)

Verb

ramshackle (third-person singular simple present ramshackles, present participle ramshackling, simple past and past participle ramshackled)

1. (obsolete, transitive) To ransack.