Tenterhooks or tenter hooks are hooked nails used with a device known as a ''tenter'', a wooden frame, used since at least the 14th century in the process of making

woolen Woolen (American English) or woollen (Commonwealth English) is a type of yarn made from carded wool. Woolen yarn is soft, light, stretchy, and full of air. It is thus a good insulator, and makes a good knitting yarn. Woolen yarn is in contrast t ...

cloth Textile is an umbrella term that includes various fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, filaments, threads, and different types of fabric. At first, the word "textiles" only referred to woven fabrics. However, weaving is n ...

, over which wet cloth would be stretched to prevent shrinkage as it dries, but now superseded by the stenter in the textile manufacturing industry. The phrase "''on tenterhooks''" has become a

metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide, or obscure, clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are usually meant to cr ...

for nervous anticipation.

Cloth-making

After a piece of cloth was woven, it still contained

oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) and lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturate ...

and dirt from the fleece; a craftsmen known as a fuller (in Scotland, ), cleaned the woollen cloth in a

fulling mill Fulling, also known as tucking or walking ( Scots: ''waukin'', hence often spelt waulking in Scottish English), is a step in woollen clothmaking which involves the cleansing of woven cloth (particularly wool) to eliminate (lanolin) oils, dirt, ...

, and thereafter dry it without allowing the fabric to shrink. To this end, the fuller stretches the wet cloth over a large wooden frame, called a tenter (), leaving it to dry outdoors. The lengths of wet cloth were stretched on the tenter using ''tenterhooks'', hooked nails made with a long shank that was driven into the wooden tenter frame around its perimeter, on which the selvedges were fixed so that the cloth would retain its shape and size as it dried. Historically, tentergrounds (alternatively, tenter-fields), large open spaces full of tenters, wherever cloth was made, and as a result the word "tenter" is found in place names throughout the United Kingdom and its former colonial possessions, for example several streets in

Spitalfields Spitalfields () is an area in London, England and is located in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is in East London and situated in the East End of London, East End. Spitalfields is formed around Commercial Street, London, Commercial Stre ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, and Tenterfield House in Haddington, East Lothian, Scotland, which in turn gave its name to Tenterfield in New South Wales, Australia. The word ''tenter'' is still used today to refer to production line machinery employed to stretch

polyester Polyester is a category of polymers that contain one or two ester linkages in every repeat unit of their main chain. As a specific material, it most commonly refers to a type called polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Polyesters include some natura ...

films and similar fabrics. The spelling ''stenter'' is also found.

Metaphor

By the mid-18th century, the phrase ''on tenterhooks'' came to mean being in a state of tension, uneasiness,

anxiety Anxiety is an emotion characterised by an unpleasant state of inner wikt:turmoil, turmoil and includes feelings of dread over Anticipation, anticipated events. Anxiety is different from fear in that fear is defined as the emotional response ...

, or suspense, i.e., figuratively stretched like the cloth on the tenter. John Ford's 1633 play ''Broken Heart'' contains the lines: "There is no faith in woman. Passion, O, be contain'd! My very heart-strings Are on the tenters." In 1690 the periodical ''The General History of Europe'' used the term in the modern sense: "The mischief is, they will not meet again these two years, so that all business must hang upon the tenterhooks till then." In 1826, English periodical '' Monthly magazine or British register of literature, sciences, and the belles-lettres'' contained the line "I hope (though the wish is a cruel one) that my fair readers, if any such readers have deigned to follow me thus far, are on tenterhooks to know to whom the prize was adjudged." In a letter to his wife the same year, American educator Francis Wayland (waiting for his promised appointment as President of

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

) wrote "I was never so much on tenter hooks before." The misuse of "on tender hooks" instead of "on tenterhooks" is one of the most misused English phrases, or

eggcorn An eggcorn is the alteration of a word or phrase through the mishearing or reinterpretation of one or more of its elements,, sense 2 creating a new phrase which is plausible when used in the same context. Thus, an eggcorn is an unexpectedly fitti ...

s, according to a 2017 survey of two thousand British adults, ranking in fifth place.

References

{{Fabric Metalworking Textile arts