Forms 4–6 feter(e, fet(t)re, (5 fedre, -dyr, fether, fet(t)yr, fetur, 6– fetter. [f. prec. sb.; cf. OFris. fitera, OHG. (ka-) feẓarôn, ON. fiǫtra.]
1. trans. To bind with or as with fetters; to chain, fasten, shackle.
c. 1300. Havelok, 2758.
| He … dide him binde and fetere wel | |
| With gode feteres al of stel. |
c. 1386. Chaucer, Knt.’s T., 371.
| For elles had I dweld with Theseus | |
| I-fetered in his prisoun for evere moo. |
c. 1420. Chron. Vilod., 942. He hadde y ffedryde to gedur his leygus two.
c. 1489. Caxton, Sonnes of Aymon, xvi. 369. He made to be broughte a grete payre of yrens, and fetred hym wyth theym.
1535. Stewart, Cron. Scot., II. 301.
| Syne tuke the king and put in presoun strang, | |
| Fetrit richt fast. |
1647. Ward, The Simple Cobler of Aggawam in America, 54. Is Majestas Imperii growne so kickish, that it cannot stand quiet with Salus Populi, unlesse it be fettered?
1791. Mrs. Radcliffe, The Romance of the Forest, xii. ‘Take him instantly from the room, and see that he is strongly fettered,’ said the Marquis; ‘he shall soon know what a criminal, who adds insolence to guilt, may suffer.’
1835. W. Irving, A Tour on the Prairies, 276. Dismounting, I now fettered my horse to prevent his straying, and advanced to contemplate my victim.
1847. Grote, Greece (1862), III. xxxi. 145. The actual chains in which the prisoners had been fettered, exhibiting in their appearance the damage undergone when the acropolis was burnt by Xerxês.
b. transf. and fig. To impose restraint upon; to confine, impede, restrain. Also with down.
1526. Pilgr. Perf. (W. de W., 1531), 172. Synne, in the whiche we be wrapped and fettered.
a. 1586. Sidney, Arcad., II. xxii. 200. Neither her worthinesse (which in trueth was great) nor his owne suffering for her (which it wont to endeare affection) could fetter his ficklenesse.
1633. P. Fletcher, Poet. Misc., 79.
| Cease then, fond men to blaze your constant loving; | |
| Love’s firie, wingèd, light, and therefore changing: | |
| Fond man, that thinks such fire and aire to fetter! | |
| All change; men for the worse, women for better. |
1681. W. Temple, Memoirs, III. Wks. 1731, I. 359. I never could go to Service for nothing but Wages, nor endure to be fetter’d in Business when I thought it was to no purpose.
1711. Steele, Spect., No. 20, 23 March, ¶ 4. While the generality of the world are fettered by rules, and move by proper and just methods, he who has no respect to any of them carries away the reward due to that propriety of behaviour, with no other merit, but that of having neglected it.
1758. C. Lucas, Ess. Waters, II. 142. The stream, arising from the overflowings of three of these springs, is sufficient to keep the wheel of a tanner’s bark-mill, on which it runs, free in the hardest frost; when all the other mills in the country have their wheels fettered with icy chains.
1788. Priestley, Lect. Hist., V. lxv. 521. In this age of reason and philosophy we should be absolutely ignorant without the help of history, how deplorably the best faculties of the human mind may be sunk and fettered by superstition.
1829. Arnold, Let., in Stanley, Life & Corr. (1858), I. v. 207. It is not that I think we are better than our fathers in proportion to our lights, or that our powers are at all greater; on the contrary, they deserve more admiration, considering the difficulties they had to struggle with; yet still I cannot but think, that the habit of looking back upon them as models, and more especially in all political institutions, is the surest way to fetter our own progress, and to deprive us of the advantages of our own superior experience, which, it is no boast to say, that we possess, but rather, a most disgraceful reproach, since we use them so little.
1837. J. H. Newman, Par. Serm. (ed. 2), III. xxv. 420. Can any form of society or any human doctrine fetter down our hearts, and make us think and remember as it will?
† 2. To bind (a wheel) with a tire. Obs.
1523. Fitzherbert, The Boke of Husbandry, § 5. The wheles, and those be made of nathes, spokes, fellyes, and dowles, and they muste be well fettred with wood or yren.
