Also 5 feter-, -ir-, -yr-, 6 fether-, 7 feawter-, fewter-. [f. FETTER sb. + LOCK; in sense 1 a corruption of FETLOCK.]
1. = FETLOCK 1. Also used attrib.
1587. Mascall, Govt. Cattle (1627), 135. They clippe away all the hayre sauing the fetherlocke.
1617. Markham, Caval., II. 9. His ioyntes beneath his knees great, with long feawter lockes.
1678. Lond. Gaz., No. 1338/4. A grey Mare … charm’d upon the 4 fetter-lock joints.
1688. R. Holme, Armoury, II. 154/1. The Fetter-lock, or Fet-lock, the hair as groweth behind of the Feet; the Fewter-lock.
1716. Lond. Gaz., No. 5470/4. The Fetter-Locks behind bigger than the other.
1841. Catlin, N. Amer. Ind. (1844), II. xlv. 85. Our horses’ feet were sinking at every step, above their fetterlocks.
b. transf. of a human being.
1664. Butler, Hud., II. i. 91.
| And from his wooden Jail, the Stocks, | |
| To set at large his Fetter-locks, | |
| And by Exchange, Parole, or Ransom, | |
| To free him from th’ enchanted Mansion. |
2. An apparatus fixed to the foot of a horse, to prevent his running away.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 159/1. Fetyrlokke, sera compeditalis.
1530. Palsgr., 220/1. Fetterlocke, serrure a goujons.
1610. Holland, Camden’s Brit., I. 510. The forme of the Keepe beforesaid built like a fetter-locke occasioneth mee to digresse a little.
fig. 1841. G. P. R. James, Brigand, xxi. In those days despotic suspicion had not invented the fetter-lock of passports; as there was no tyrannical police, no licensed spies to whom the abode of every citizen, the sleeping-place of every traveller, the movements of every being in the realm were known, as is now the case in France.
b. The same represented on a badge, shield, etc. Also a jewel of the same form.
It is figured as a cylinder to which a chain or steel band is attached in the form of a D, one end being permanently fixed and the other secured by a lock.
1463. Bury Wills (1850), 37. A litil fetiriok of gold with a lace of perle and smal bedys therto of blak.
c. 1465. Pol. Rel. & L. Poems (1866), 2. An F. for þe feterlock þat is of grete Substance.
1605. Camden, Rem. (1637), 346. King Edward the fourth, bare his white Rose, the fetterlocke before specified, and the sunne after the battell of Mortimers crosse, where three Sunnes were seene immediately conjoyning in one.
1646. Buck, Rich. III., vi. 115. The device was, A Faulcon encompassed with a Fetter-lock.
1820. Scott, Ivanhoe, xxix. A fetterlock, and a shacklebolt on a field-sable.
