On Tenterhooks 1100 Words
On Tenterhooks 1100 Words
in a state of suspense and agitation, nervous, excited, apprehensive, on edge, agitated, anxious, a state of anxiety
Tenterhooks or tenter hooks are hooked nails in a device called a tenter. Tenters were wooden frames which were used as far back as the 14th century in the process of making woolen cloth.
The phrase “on tenterhooks” has become a metaphor for being anxious.
By the mid-18th century, the phrase on tenterhooks came to mean being in a state of tension, uneasiness, anxiety, or suspense, i.e., figuratively stretched like the cloth on the tenter.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/
Tenters are no longer everyday objects but a hundred years ago, in wool weaving areas like the North of England, they were a common sight on the land around the many woollen mills, called ‘tenter-fields’. It is easy to see how the figurative expression ‘on tenterhooks’, with its meaning of painful tension, derived from the ‘tenting’ or stretching of fabric. The expression was originally ‘on the tenters’. The English West Country playwright John Ford was the first to record that expression in the play Broken Heart, 1633:
Passion, O, be contained. My very heart strings Are on the Tenters.
Source: https://www.phrases.org.uk/
Antonym: tranquil, serene, calm
Farsi: عصبی، نا آرام
