Tenterhook

Common card · No. 239453

Tenterhooks or tenter hooks are hooked nails used with a device known as a tenter, a wooden frame, used since at least the 14th century in the process of making woolen cloth, over which wet cloth would be stretched to prevent shrinkage as it dried, but now superseded by the stenter in the textile manufacturing industry. The phrase "on tenterhooks" has become a metaphor for nervous anticipation.

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