ramshackle
adjective
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The Evolution of Ramshackle
Ramshackle has nothing to do with rams, nor the act of being rammed, nor shackles. The word is an alteration of ransackled, an obsolete form of the verb ransack, meaning "to search through or plunder." (Ransack comes from Old Norse words meaning "house" and "seek.") A home that has been ransacked has had its contents thrown into disarray, and that image may be what inspired people to start using ramshackle in the first half of the 19th century to describe something that is poorly constructed or in a state of near collapse. Ramshackle in modern use can also be figurative, as in "a ramshackle excuse for the error."
Examples of ramshackle in a Sentence
Elizabeth Hand, Washington Post, 16 July 2024
Tanya Orellana’s stark set of ramshackle wooden barns with Cha See’s lights beaming through the cracks in the slats and Jake Rodriguez’s sound making the ground rumble help conjure this hardscrabble landscape of highways and dirt, blood and hunger.
—Karen D'souza, The Mercury News, 24 June 2024
Also along the banks of the Spree River, Berlin’s largest sustainable urban development project has a ramshackle vibe.
—Liz Humphreys, Condé Nast Traveler, 8 May 2023
Fred’s opened in 1978 when founders Gari and J.D. Chandler took over a ramshackle cafe built in what was then an industrial area off West Seventh Street after the 1949 Fort Worth flood.
—Bud Kennedy, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 17 June 2024
See all Example Sentences for ramshackle 
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'ramshackle.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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Cite this Entry
“Ramshackle.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ramshackle. Accessed 27 Jul. 2024.
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ramshackle
adjective
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