Search the Dictionary

Fetters.

A shackle; especially, one to confine the legs; a fetter. [Written also give.] Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves. Shak. With gyves upon his wrist. Hood.

To put a hamper or fetter on; to shackle; to insnare; to inveigle; hence, to impede in motion or progress; to embarrass; to encumber. "Hampered nerves." Blackmore. A lion hampered in a net. L'Estrange. They hamper and entangle our souls. Tillotson.

derate, or rash, manner. -- To have the heels of, to outrun. -- To lay by the heels, to fetter; to shackle; to imprison. Shak. Addison. -- To show the heels, to flee; to run from. -- To take to the heels, to flee; to betake to flight. -- To throw up another's heels, to trip him. Bunyan. -- To tread upon one's hee…

To fetter by tying the legs; to hopple; to clog. " They hobbled their horses." Dickens

A fetter for horses, or cattle, when turned out to graze; -- chiefly used in the plural.

To manacle; to fetter; hence; to confine; to restrain from free action. Although this corporal rind Thou hast immanacled. Milton.

Who, as Ulysses says, opinion crowns With an imperial voice. Shak. To tame the proud, the fetter'd slave to free, These are imperial arts, and worthy thee. Dryden. He sounds his imperial clarion along the whole line of battle. E. Everett.

o circumstances or conditions; as, he is in difficulties; she stood in a blaze of light. "Fettered in amorous chains." Shak. Wrapt in sweet sounds, as in bright veils. Shelley.

Insolent conduct or treatment; insult. Loaded with fetters and insolences from the soldiers. Fuller.

Fetters; chains; handcuffs; manacles. Four of the sufferers were left to rot in irons. Macaulay.

uff; a shackle for the hand or wrist; -- usually in the plural. Doctrine unto fools is as fetters on the feet, and like manacles on the right hand. Ecclus. xxi. 19.

A fetter for the arm. Ainsworth.

an; mere; simple; unmixed; as, pure water; pure clay; pure air; pure compassion. The pure fetters on his shins great. Chaucer. A guinea is pure gold if it has in it no alloy. I. Watts.

The act of fettening or pampering. [R.] Topsell.

r shackle on the other leg or arm, or to something else, by a chain or a strap; a gyve; a fetter. His shackles empty left; himself escaped clean. Spenser.

A fetter worn on the leg by a convict. [Eng.]

To fetter, as a horse; to hobble.

strain the shrouds of a ship; to strain the cords of a musical instrument. "To strain his fetters with a stricter care." Dryden.

To loose from shackles or bonds; to set free from restraint; to unfetter. Addison.