trammel

noun

• 1 (trammels) literary restrictions or impediments to freedom of action:we will forge our own future, free from the trammels of materialism

• 2 (also trammel net) a three-layered dragnet, designed so that a fish entering through one of the large-meshed outer sections will push part of the finer-meshed central section through the large meshes on the further side, forming a pocket in which the fish is trapped.

• 3an instrument consisting of a board with two grooves intersecting at right angles, in which the two ends of a beam compass can slide to draw an ellipse.

  [ early 18th century: so named because the motion of the beam is ‘restricted’ by the grooves]
• a beam compass.

• 4US a hook in a fireplace for a kettle.

verb (trammels, trammelling, trammelled; US trammels, trammeling, trammeled)

• deprive of freedom of action:those less trammelled by convention than himself