ball and chain

1. 1.

   heavy iron ball attached to a prisoner by a chain

   Broadershackle

Questions about ball and chain

What does ball and chain mean?

ball and chain means "heavy iron ball attached to a prisoner by a chain".

Is ball and chain a common word?

ball and chain is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.