or shackling, adj. (American).—Rickety; RAMSHACKLE (q.v.).
1859. J. W. PALMER, The New and the Old, 55. A very small man, slender and brittle-looking, or what old colored nurses call ‘SHACKLY.’
1871. J. T. TROWBRIDGE, Coupon Bonds, 387. The gate itself was such a SHACKLING concern a child could n’t have leaned on ’t without breaking it down.
1884. S. L. CLEMENS (‘Mark Twain’), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, xxi. All kinds of old SHACKLY wagons.
1888. HELEN GRAY CONE, Hercules: A Hero, in The Century Magazine, xxv. 672. An unpainted and SHACKLY dwelling.
1900. R. H. SAVAGE, Brought to Bay, v. Caliente, a SHACKLY frontier settlement, clustered around its one-track railway, offered little to interest the refined engineer.
