Word.ws English Dictionary

on tender hooks

on tender hooks is the misconstruction of on tenterhooks.

Meaning of on tenterhooks

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) In a state of (great) apprehension or suspense; on pins and needles; on the rack.
    • I made no reply, but left him upon the tenter-hooks of impatient uncertainty.[1748, [Tobias Smollett], “I Enquire about My Uncle, and Understand He is Gone to Sea— […]”, in The Adventures of Roderick Random. […], volume I, London: […] [William Strahan] for J[ohn] Osborn […]...

Questions about on tender hooks

What is on tender hooks the misconstruction of?
On tender hooks is the misconstruction of on tenterhooks.

Words near on tender hooks in the dictionary

  1. on tap
  2. on tape
  3. on target
  4. on task
  5. on television
  6. on tender hooks
  7. on tenterhooks
  8. on tenters
  9. on terms with
  10. on that note
  11. on that score

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: on tender hooks (page history and authors); on tenterhooks (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “on tender hooks.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/on_tender_hooks. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.