[pl.]
IDIOMS
(be) on tenterhooks (AmE also be on pins and needles) (to be) very anxious or excited while you are waiting to find out sth or see what will happen:
I've been on tenterhooks all week waiting for the results.
ORIGIN From tenterhook, a hook which in the past was used to keep material stretched on a drying frame during manufacture.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
Where does this definition of tenterhooks come from?
This entry for tenterhooks is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is tenterhooks a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, tenterhooks is tagged as noun.
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Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
