hamstring

Etymology

ham (“region back of the knee joint”) + string

noun

1. (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.
2. (informal) The biceps femoris, semimembranosus, and semitendinosus muscles.
   Developing muscle around both sides of a joint (think biceps and triceps, abs and low back, quads and hamstrings) should be one of your primary training considerations because strength on each side leads to lower injury rates. 2010, Adam Garett, “Fried Hams”, in Reps!, 17:23

verb

1. (transitive) To lame or disable by cutting the tendons of the ham or knee; to hough.
2. (transitive, figurative) To cripple; to incapacitate; to disable.
   Its trademark policies of privatization, deregulation, tax cuts and free trade deals: these have liberated corporations to accumulate enormous profits and treat the atmosphere like a sewage dump, and hamstrung our ability, through the instrument of the state, to plan for our collective welfare. 2017-07-17, Martin Lukacs, “Neoliberalism has conned us into fighting climate change as individuals”, in The Guardian