ramshackle

adjective

ram·shack·le ˈram-ˌsha-kəl

Synonyms of ramshackle next

: appearing ready to collapse : rickety

: carelessly or loosely constructed

a ramshackle plot

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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

The movie's ramshackle plot is confusing and not believable.

Recent Examples on the Web

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Living in near-poverty in a series of poor apartments, or out of a ramshackle touring van for weeks on end? —

Cat Woods, Los Angeles Times, 22 Jan. 2025 The tiny, ramshackle 19th-century clapboard house is light-years away from the nearby Vanderbilt Mansion, also open to the public. —

airmail.news, 27 July 2024 The 3-week-old baby was the third to die from the cold in Gaza's tent camps in recent days, doctors said, deaths that underscore the squalid conditions, with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians crammed into often ramshackle tents after fleeing Israeli offensives. —

Democrat-Gazette Staff From Wire Reports, arkansasonline.com, 26 Dec. 2024 The deaths underscore the squalid conditions that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians crammed into often ramshackle tents find themselves in after fleeing Israeli bombardment and offensives. —

Sam Mednick, Los Angeles Times, 25 Dec. 2024 See all Example Sentences for ramshackle