Chrysti the Wordsmith > Radio Scripts

Many of our most common expressions have long outlasted the circumstances or technologies of their inspiration. Such is the case with the cliche in the limelight, which derives from the bright stage lighting produced by burning a block of calcium carbonate, or lime.

On tenterhooks is another expression living beyond its original derivation. In a metaphorical sense, the phrase means to be suspended in a state of anxious uncertainty. Now, It is unlikely that anyone in the 21st century has used tenters or their hooks, yet, remarkably, the phrase persists.

The idiom was derived from the now-obsolete technology of manufacturing woolen cloth. Newly-woven woolen strips, still full of oil, dirt and plant residue, were washed and cleaned in a process called fulling. The wool had to then be stretched and dried to prevent shrinkage.

The fabric was pulled across a wooden frame called a tenter, and secured by metal hooks, called, appropriately enough, tenterhooks. During the Middle Ages, open fields surrounding European towns were often covered with tenter frames and drying woolen fabric.

By the sixteenth century, tenterhooks were appropriated as a metaphor for the trouble that plagues the mind or the conscience. The expression to be on tenterhooks has survived its literal origin, and now means to be figuratively stretched on the hooks of anxiety or suspense.

Radio Script > On Tenterhooks