a. Sc. Also tentie. [Later form of tentif, TENTIVE, with -if reduced to -ie, -y: see -IVE.] Watchful, attentive, observant, cautious.
c. 1555. Maitland, in Pinkerton, Anc. Scot. Poems (1786), 276. Be wyse, and tentie, in thy governing.
1728. Ramsay, Tea-t. Misc., Bonny Scot, iii. Fair winds and tenty boat-man.
1785. Burns, Halloween, viii. Jean slips in twa wi’ tentie e’e; Wha ’twas, she wadna tell.
1886. Stevenson, Kidnapped, xii. 112. Never a gun or a sword left … but what tenty folk have hidden in their thatch.
