tethered


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teth·er

 (tĕth′ər)
n.
1.
a. A rope, chain, strap, or cord for keeping an animal within a certain radius.
b. A similar ropelike restraint used as a safety measure, as for a young child or an astronaut outside a spacecraft.
c. A rope, chain, cable, or other line for restraining or securing an object: a blimp attached to the ground by tethers.
2. The extent or limit of one's resources, abilities, or endurance: drought-stricken farmers at the end of their tether.
3. A range of allowable behavior or responsibility: kept the new assistant on a short tether.
tr.v. teth·ered, teth·er·ing, teth·ers
To restrain or secure with a tether.

[Middle English teder, from Old Norse tjōdhr.]
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:
Adj.1.tethered - confined or restricted with or as if with a rope or chain
bound - confined by bonds; "bound and gagged hostages"
Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2012 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.
References in classic literature ?
And here is my dear old Bac"; and she laid hold of the horns of a reindeer, that had a bright copper ring round its neck, and was tethered to the spot.
The kid was tethered to a stake beside the waterhole.
They had left their mules tethered some distance back, in a sheltering clump of trees, and they hoped the animals would be safe.
They rode through the village of Rykonty, past tethered French hussar horses, past sentinels and men who saluted their colonel and stared with curiosity at a Russian uniform, and came out at the other end of the village.
Abdul Mourak left his blankets a dozen times to pace restlessly back and forth between the tethered horses and the crackling fire.
The sun was hot, so he sought the shelter of a nearby tree, where he tethered his horse, and sat down upon the ground to smoke.
Presently I reached a great plain where a grazing horse was tethered, and as I stood looking at it I heard voices talking apparently underground, and in a moment a man appeared who asked me how I came upon the island.
Several trappers stole quietly from the camp, and succeeded in driving in the horses which had broken away; the rest were tethered still more strongly.
Underneath, a boat was tethered to one of the supports.
Having done that, and tethered him to the iron cramp at the front of the sledge where he had been before, he was going round the horse's quarters to put the breechband and pad straight and cover him with the cloth, but at that moment he noticed that something was moving in the sledge and Nikita's head rose up out of the snow that covered it.
An interesting question, but Margaret fell asleep, tethered by affection, and lulled by the murmurs of the river that descended all the night from Wales.
Great heaps of ashes; stagnant pools, overgrown with rank grass and duckweed; broken turnstiles; and the upright posts of palings long since carried off for firewood, which menaced all heedless walkers with their jagged and rusty nails; were the leading features of the landscape: while here and there a donkey, or a ragged horse, tethered to a stake, and cropping off a wretched meal from the coarse stunted turf, were quite in keeping with the scene, and would have suggested (if the houses had not done so, sufficiently, of themselves) how very poor the people were who lived in the crazy huts adjacent, and how foolhardy it might prove for one who carried money, or wore decent clothes, to walk that way alone, unless by daylight.