cramble

English

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkɹæmbəl/
• Rhymes: -æmbəl

Noun

cramble (plural crambles)

1. (usually in the plural) A branch that has been broken and blown onto the ground by the wind.
   • 1989, Lewis Turco, The Shifting Web: New and Selected Poems, page 136:

     After the wind-tempest, when branches lie in crambles upon the clearings and neighbors at far distances phone down the foothills under the mountains to ask if all is well still, the answer is “Yes”

   • 1996, Arthur Smith, “Ordinary Crambles”, in Orders of Affection: Poems, page 60:

     These were not your ordinary crambles Boughs and branches broken by the wind.

   • 2006, “Burning the Brush Pile”, in The New Yorker, volume 82, page 56:

     I shoved into the bottom of the brush pile two large grocery bags holding chainsaw chaff well-soaked in old gasoline gone sticky— a kind of homemade napalm, except, of course, without victims, other than boughs, stumps, broken boards, vines, crambles.

Verb

cramble (third-person singular simple present crambles, present participle crambling, simple past and past participle crambled)

1. To break apart.
   • 1878, W. M. French, P. G. Rep., “Miscellaneous”, in Odd Fellow's Talisman and Literary Journal, volume 11, page 578:

     Remove this, and the foundation is gone, the superstructure will soon totter, and in less time than was consumed in erecting, will the building cramble to atoms.

   • 1958, Fukui Daigaku. Kyōikugakubu, Memoirs: Natural science, page 30:

     Usually she crambles the sand particles with her mandibles and fore legs and sweeps it out backwards through the underside of her abdomen.

   • 1988, Benazir Bhutto, The Way Out: Interviews, Impressions, Statements, and Messages, page 22:

     A sense of direction, a sense of leadership to give shape to an inertia which crambles in the face of a crises.

2. To twist and wind irregularly.
   • 1597, John Gerarde [i.e., John Gerard], The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes. […], London: […] Edm[und] Bollifant, for Bonham and Iohn Norton, →OCLC, book II, page 929:

     The yellow Fumitorie hath many crambling threddie rootes, ſomewhat thicke, groſſe, and fat, like thoſe of Aſparagus: from which riſe diuers vpright ſtalkes a cubite high, diuiding themſelues towarde the top into other ſmaller branches, whereon are confuſedly placed leaues like thoſe of Thalictrum or Engliſh Rubarbe, but leſſer and thinner: […]

   • 1901, Edward Bulwer Lytton Baron Lytton, The Works of Edward Bulwer Lytton: My novel, page 240:

     Juliet, crambling up her hair, darted into the house to prepare the tea, and also to “tidy herself.”

   • 1918, Poet Lore, volume XXIX, page 575:

     A baby, for instance, however adventurous, does not cramble, I feel sure; nor does ivy, which, as Gerarde puts it, “as it were with armes, creepeth and wandereth far about." Stouthearted Rocket, however, must cramble for its life through chalky, gravelly or stony soil of barren hills, each sturdy rootlet forcing itself along like a burrowing mole.

   • 1972, D. H. Lawrence an Italy, page 146:

     I could not bear the way they walked and talked, so crambling and material and mealy-mouthed.

3. To move unsteadily or with difficulty; to hobble.
   • 1687, The Jockey's Guide, and Farrier's Companion, page 34:

     This way is very uncertain; for the Horse finding himself cramp'd, will only draw his Legs after him, and shuffle, unless he be forc'd; and besides, if the Lists are drawn too strait, when they are taken off ; the Sinews will be so numbed, that he will be only capable of crambling and cringing; and moreover it will greatly subject him to the String-halt, and often twitching up his Legs.

   • 1861, William Falconer, “The Shipwreck: Canto III”, in Maria Mary Marinack, editor, Selections from the Works of the British Classical Poets, page 464:

     And see! enfeebled by repeated shocks, Those two, who cramble on the adjacent rocks, Their faithless hold no longer can retain, They sink o'erwhelm'd! and never rise again!

   • 1893, “The Manuscripts of Sir William Fitzherbert, Bart., of Tissington, Co. Derby”, in Great Britain. Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, page 164:

     People now who are in this house who have seen them at Macclesfield say they seem lame with their march and cramble much.

   • 1979, Aṅụ - Volume 1, page 22:

     At cockcrow she crambles up " My Master, my customers have refused to pay me."

Anagrams

• cambrel, clamber