[f. prec. sb.]
1. trans. To make fast or confine with a tether.
1483. Cath. Angl., 379/1. To Tedyr, restringere, retentare.
1523. Fitzherb., Surv., xli. (1539), 58. To tye or tedder theyr horses and mares vpon.
1577. Nottingham Rec., IV. 170. No man shall not teyther [his beasts] amongs the hey vnto it be gone of the ground.
1719. De Foe, Crusoe, I. 174. I tether’d the three Kids in the best part.
1800. Wordsw., Pet Lamb, 6. The lamb was all alone, And by a slender cord was tethered to a stone.
1882. E. O’Donovan, Merv Oasis, I. 396. Hundreds of horses were tethered in every direction.
2. To fasten, make fast generally.
1563. Winȝet, Four Scoir Thre Quest., § 35, Wks. (S.T.S.), I. 100, margin. Heir Iob. Knox be his awin sentence aganis wtheris, is fast tedderit in the girn.
1674. Grew, Anat. Trunks, II. vi. § 4. The said Roots tethering it, as it trails along, to the ground.
1832. Ht. Martineau, Hill & Vall., i. A gate,… too well tethered to be quickly opened.
1898. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., V. 744. The heart is tethered to the bottom of the pericardium.
3. fig. To fasten or bind by conditions or circumstances; to bind so as to detain.
c. 1470. Henryson, Orpheus & Eur., 456. Suld our desyre be soucht wp in þe speris, Quhene It Is tedderit on þis warldis breris.
1624. Bp. Hall, Contempl., N. T., II. iii. He, that bounded thy power, tether’d thee shorter.
1790. Burns, Tam O’Shanter, 67. Nae man can tether time or tide, The hour approaches Tam maun ride.
1879. H. James, R. Hudson, I. 65. She would fain see me all my life tethered to the law.
Hence Tethered ppl. a., fastened with a tether; limited, confined, ‘tied’; Tethering vbl. sb. and ppl. a., fastening with a tether or the like.
1573. Tusser, Husb. (1878), 42. Get home with thy brakes, er an sommer be gon, for *teddered cattle to sit there vpon.
a. 1680. Charnock, Attrib. God (1834), I. 237. Our contracted and tethered capacities.
1845. R. W. Hamilton, Pop. Educ., iii. (ed. 2), 43. All this may be preferable; but it is a tethered freedom still.
1890. Doyle, White Company, 185. A dozen tethered horses and mules grazed around the encampment.
1671. Grew, Anat. Plants, iii. App. § 9. By the Linking of their Claspers, and … by the *Tethering of their Trunk-Roots, being couched together.
1862. Hislop, Prov. Scot., 35. Better hands loose than in an ill tethering.
1863. Whyte-Melville, Gladiators, 367. Not a vestige remained of halter or tethering ropes.
