Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of the tendons at the rear hollow of the human knee.
  • noun The hamstring muscle.
  • noun The large tendon in the back of the hock of a quadruped.
  • transitive verb To cut the hamstring of (an animal or a person) and thereby cripple.
  • transitive verb To destroy or hinder the efficiency of; frustrate.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To cut the hamstrings of, and thus lame or disable.
  • In whaling, to cut the muscle or tendons of the small of the whale, so as to render the flukes useless and make the animal helpless. It is done with the fluke-spade when a boat is hauled up alongside a running whale.
  • noun In human anatomy, the tendon of a muscle which bounds the ham, or space behind the knee on either side above the middle of the popliteal space.
  • noun In ordinary language, the great tendon or sinew at the back of the so-called knee or hock of the hind leg of a quadruped.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Anat.) One of the great tendons situated in each side of the ham, or space back of the knee, and connected with the muscles of the back of the thigh.
  • transitive verb To lame or disable by cutting the tendons of the ham or knee; to hough; hence, to cripple; to incapacitate; to disable.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun anatomy One of the great tendons situated in each side of the ham, or space back of the knee, and connected with the muscles of the back of the thigh.
  • noun informal The biceps femoris muscle.
  • verb transitive To lame or disable by cutting the tendons of the ham or knee; to hough; hence, to cripple; to incapacitate; to disable.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb cripple by cutting the hamstring
  • noun one of the tendons at the back of the knee
  • verb make ineffective or powerless

Etymologies

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Examples

Comments

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  • So have they hamstrung the valour of the Subject by seeking to effeminate us all at home.

    —Milton, 1641, Reform.

    The earliest known use of the verb, and it neatly illustrates the anomalous past tense and past participle. One would expect 'hamstringed', since it's formed from the noun, and doesn't contain the strong verb 'string'. (Actually that verb doesn't go back to Old English, and is itself a creation of only a century or so before Milton.)

    July 29, 2008

  • HW Fowler says:

    "string is not the verb string; we do not string the ham, but do something to the tendon called the hamstring; the verb, that is, is made not from the two words ham & string, but from the noun hamstring. It must therefore make hamstringed."

    May 10, 2018