What are tenter hooks? people are always on them .. lol?

It's what meat was hung on

What are tenter hooks? people are always on them .. lol?
According to the wonderful World Wide Words site, in the course of manufacturing woollen cloth, it needed to be dried.





The drying "frames were the tenters, and the tenter hooks were the metal hooks used to fix the cloth to the frame. ... So it was not a huge leap of the imagination to think of somebody on tenterhooks as being in an state of anxious suspense, stretched like the cloth on the tenter. "





"Tenter comes from the Latin tendere, to stretch, via a French intermediate. The word has been in the language since the fourteenth century, and on tenters soon after became a phrase meaning painful anxiety. The exact phrase on tenterhooks seems first to have been used by Tobias Smollett in Roderick Random in 1748."





And well done for not saying tenderhooks, as it is sometimes misspelt. (And as it is in the Yahoo "Check Spelling" dictionary!)
Reply:To be on tenterhooks - to be in suspense, to await an outcome anxiously. The allusion is to newly woven cloth being stretched out or 'tentered' on hooks passed through the selvages. Latin 'tentus' meaning 'stretched', hence the word 'tent', canvas being stretched.
Reply:ten·ter·hook (tĕn'tər-hʊk')


n.


A hooked nail for securing cloth on a tenter.





idiom:


on tenterhooks





In a state of uneasiness, suspense, or anxiety





Now no need to worry about it any more.
Reply:It's from the old woollen industry ... stretching the woollen cloth on frames known as tenters and held in place by tenterhooks. Hence 'being on tenterhooks' means to be 'held in suspense' eg waiting for exam results.
Reply:Very good answers but emmarose I think is a possibly mistaken with the indian torture as I recall this was a test of manhood in some american indian tribes where the young men would hook themselves through their flesh then hang until the hook tore through. Of course they may have used in for torture as well
Reply:The Red Indian in times gone by, used to torture their enemies by suspending them from their tepees, by hooks through their flesh.
Reply:tender hooks are what tender pieces of meat were hung on in the butchers years ago
Reply:Well, I'm always on them, but I haven't got a clue what I've been on though.



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