We’re all on tenterhooks...

[peterthooper at juno.com]

...waiting for the next MJJG posting...

(Obviously...though in point of fact, we get the MJJG we deserve, ‘tis said)


What is a tenterhook anyway? 

https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/tenterhooks-or-tenderhooks


“The 1845 Encyclopaedia Metropolitana or Universal Dictionary of Knowledge, Volume 1, describes a tenter as “a number of vertical posts fixed to the ground, with a continuous horizontal fixed rail at the top as long as the piece of cloth; there are also other horizontal rails which are fitted between the upright posts … both the upper and lower rails are driven full of tenterhooks; on these the lists of the cloth are fastened, after which the lower or movable rail is pressed downwards to the full breadth of the cloth, and then secured in its place by the pins. In this state, the pieces are left to dry.”

“So a tenterhook is a metal hook that holds the cloth in place on the tenter, and the frames were set out in fields so the wool could dry....


Maps Used to Show Tenter-Fields

According to Michael Quinion of the World Wide Words website, tenters were so numerous and common that old maps of England sometimes called out certain areas as tenter-fields. 

In this literal sense, the earliest reference in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1480, and the earliest full phrase I can read without butchering is from 1518: Her nails as sharp as tenterhooks.

How Tenterhooks Got Its Current Meaning

The figurative meaning seems to stem from the idea that the drying cloth is being strained and stretched by the tenterhooks, and by analogy, someone who is strained or stretched to wits end is on tenterhooks like the cloth. The first reference for this figurative sense is more than a couple hundred years later in 1748: I left him upon the tenterhooks of impatient uncertainty.

The OED says it is now a rare or obscure saying, but people also used to say they were “on tenters” or “on the tenter” to mean the same thing as “on tenterhooks.”









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