beshackle

English

Etymology

From be- +‎ shackle.

Verb

beshackle (third-person singular simple present beshackles, present participle beshackling, simple past and past participle beshackled)

1. (transitive, uncommon, archaic) To shackle. [from late 16th c.]
   • 1599, Thomas Nashe, Nashes Lenten Stuffe,  […], London:  […] N.L.; C. B., page 50:

     Who this king ſhould bee, beſhackled theyr wits,and layd them a dry ground euery one.

   • 1704, “An Ironical Encomium on the unparallel'd Proceedings of the Incomparable Couple of Whiggiſh Walloons”, in Poems on Affairs of State, from 1640, to This Present Year 1704, volume III, pages 167-168:

     Shall guilded Chains beſhackle you with Fears ?

   • 1997 May, Meredith Maran, “Scenes from a Femenist Childhood”, in Notes from An Incomplete Revolution: Real Life Since Feminism, Bantam Books, page 202:

     Suddenly applause explodes around me. I look up from where I’m crouched in the street and see that Peter, Jesse, and I are surrounded by a circle of gay men. Bare-chested and beshackled; sequined and polo-shirted; mustached and mascara’ed—thirty or forty men are clapping and beaming down at Peter, Jesse, and me.