www.alphadictionary.com

• ramshackle •

Pronunciation: ræm-shæk-êl • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: Rickety, run-down, dilapidated.

Notes: This good word is another in our series of words that are not what they seem to be. It has nothing to do with shackling male sheep but rather refers to the state of repair in which buildings are sometimes found, e.g. 'a ramshackle cottage by the sea'. It is a lexical orphan without even a verb to its name and that, despite the fact that it started out its life as a verb.

In Play: Even though this word is most often associated with buildings, by no means is its metaphoric range limited to architectural objectives: "Given the ramshackle organization of his office, it is a wonder he can locate anything in it." You must know someone whose ramshackle appearance would by far overburden the epithet "casual".

Word History: Tammany Hall had less corruption than today's word has suffered over its history. It is a back-formation of ramshackled, a dialectal corruption of ranshackled, itself a corruption of ransackled, the past participle of ransackle "to ransack". This last word is the frequentative (indicating repeated activity) variant of Middle English ransaken "to pillage", which went on to become ransack. This verb was ultimately borrowed from Old Norse rannsaka "house search" comprising rann "house" + *saka "to search, seek." So it is no etymological accident that a ramshackle house looks as though it has been frequently ransacked by Vikings.

Ramshackle is a word dear to my heart. Are you going to add sigoggelin next?

That's a new one to me Philip.

It is a noun used in Appalachia to mean very poorly constructed.

There was much discussion of this word back in 2013. I couldn't find anything but a definition on line and none in the "respectable" dictionaries, particularly no history or any explanation how it got up in the hills.

The word was created in Appalachia. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHIJfbYhQFg

And the English equivalent - jerry-rigged, or jerrybuilt.

Thanks, Phil, for that very entertaining video.

There is "jury rigged" which is different than a rigged jury. Then there is a certain American unnamed politician [so called] who thinks elections are rigged if he doesn't win.

We have had "jury rig" as a word of the day twice now. Here's the link
https://www.alphadictionary.com/goodword/word/jury-rig

And here is the link to INCONDITE viewtopic.php?f=1&t=10459&p=53492&hilit=jerry#p53492, which apparently means the same thing as jury-rigged or jerry-built or ramshackled and whose discussion explores the jerry alternative (with some learned comments from bnjtokyo and George Kovac).