a. [f. FETTER sb. and v. + -LESS.] Without fetters; unfettered; that cannot be fettered. lit. and fig.

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1604.  Marston, Malcontent, I. iii.

        Yet this affected straine gives me a tongue
As fetterlesse as is an emperours.

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1804.  Moore, To the Boston Frigate, 7.

        Well—peace to the land! may the people, at length,
Know that freedom is bliss, but that honour is strength;
That though man have the wings of the fetterless wind,
Of the wantonest air that the north can unbind,
Yet if health do not sweeten the blast with her bloom,
Nor virtue’s aroma its pathway perfume,
Unblest is the freedom and dreary the flight,
That but wanders to ruin and wantons to blight!

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1816.  J. Gilchrist, Philosophic Etymology, 202. I would rather see them [the literary multitude] as wild, lawless and fetterless as the bold Arab and his spirited courser, than the poor subdued, enslaved, dull, stupid things they now are.

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1892.  M. Field, Sight & Song, 40.

                She will not halt,
    But spring delighted to the salt,
When fetterless her ample form
Can beat the refluence of the waves back to their crested storm.

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