verb
definition
To shackle or bind up with fetters.
definition
To restrain or impede; to hamper.
adjective
definition
Bound by chains or shackles.
definition
(by extension) Restricted.
definition
Of the feet: bent backward and apparently unfit for walking.
Examples of fettered in a Sentence
A curious find was a grave containing burials of eighteen men fettered with iron collars and shackles.
I am not fettered by adoration of your travel plans.
Houdini lay on his side, still fettered by the manacles.
Once the first acts of treason against humanity had been enacted, the behavior of authorities worldwide was no longer fettered by virtue.
As a former subaltern of the Life Guards, he is still fettered by the curious, but stern social code of his regiment.
But his operations were at first greatly fettered by want of capital, until Jedediah Strutt, having satisfied himself of the value of the machines, entered with his partner, Samuel Need, into partnership with him, and enabled him in 1771 to build a second factory, on a much larger scale, at Cromford in Derbyshire, the machinery of which was turned by a water-wheel.
If the contract was broken, they became prisoners and might be fettered or made to work as slaves until the obligation was satisfied.
To be a fraction of the corporate sovereign, if it had its gains, had also its disadvantages; the Venetian noble was fettered by burthens, restrictions and suspicions from which the Venetian citizen was free.
Securities were taken against the revolt of slaves by not associating those of the same nationality and language; they were sometimes fettered to prevent flight, and, after a first attempt at escape, branded to facilitate their recovery.
Thus fettered, even the realism of the Gothic sculptors failed, except in rare instances, of its full expression.
They were fettered by the dissatisfaction of the Left wing of their own party.
French companies rested more than did their rivals on false principles; they were more fettered by the royal power, and had less initiative of their own, and therefore had less chance of surviving.
Whilst Russia, Austria, Prussia and France were becoming powerful monarchies with centralized administration, Poland had remained a weak feudal republic with an elected king chosen under foreign influence and fettered by constitutional restrictions.
So, the better to repress them, it created in 1369 a chief of the police, with the title of esecutore, and a numerous association of popolani - the company or casata grande of the people - as bulwarks against the nobles, who had been recalled from banishment, and who, though fettered by strict regulations, were now eligible for offices of the state.
European Liberalism, too, gagged and fettered under Metternich's "system," recognized in the Greeks the champions of its own cause; while even conservative statesmen, schooled in the memories of ancient Hellas, saw in the struggle a fight of civilization against barbarism.
Thus Sisyphus fettered Death, keeping him prisoner till rescued by Ares; in Venetian folklore Beppo ties him up in a bag for eighteen months; while in Sicily an innkeeper corks him up in a bottle, and a monk keeps him in his pouch for forty years.
The Spanish drama, meanwhile, untrammelled by those false canons of pseudo-classic taste which fettered the theatre in Italy and afterwards in France, rose to an eminence in the hands of Lope de Vega and Calderon which only the English, and the English only in the masterpieces of three or four playwrights, can rival.
Thrice Samson scoffingly told her how he might be bound, and thrice he readily broke the bonds with which she had fettered him in his sleep; seven green bow-strings, new ropes, and even the braiding of his hair into the frame of the loom failed to secure him.
In 1839 on the final dissolution of the kingdom of the Netherlands, Holland gave definite form to this right by fixing the toll, and by obtaining the assent of the powers to the arrangement which fettered the trade of Antwerp. In 1863 after long negotiations Belgium bought up this right - each of the powers interested in the trade contributing its quota - and the navigation of the Scheldt was then declared free.
This unexpected and, as it seemed to Nicholas, quite voluntary letter from Sonya freed him from the knot that fettered him and from which there had seemed no escape.