All 5 Uses of
fetter
in
Don Quixote
- black of his nail; to escape doing what he wanted was, however, also impossible; so what he did for peace's sake was to remove his right hand, which held the back of the saddle, and with it to untie gently and silently the running string which alone held up his breeches, so that on loosening it they at once fell down round his feet like fetters; he then raised his shirt as well as he could and bared his hind quarters, no slim ones.†
Chpt 1.19-20fetters = restrains or hinders OR shackles for the ankles
- Sancho, on his part, gave a helping hand to release Gines de Pasamonte, who was the first to leap forth upon the plain free and unfettered, and who, attacking the prostrate commissary, took from him his sword and the musket, with which, aiming at one and levelling at another, he, without ever discharging it, drove every one of the guards off the field, for they took to flight, as well to escape Pasamonte's musket, as the showers of stones the now released galley slaves were raining upon them.†
Chpt 1.21-22unfettered = unrestrained or unhinderedstandard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unfettered means not and reverses the meaning of fettered. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
- pride and arrogance were broken, among all that were there made happy (for the Christians who died that day were happier than those who remained alive and victorious) I alone was miserable; for, instead of some naval crown that I might have expected had it been in Roman times, on the night that followed that famous day I found myself with fetters on my feet and manacles on my hands.†
Chpt 1.39-40fetters = restrains or hinders OR shackles for the ankles
- Perhaps as you are not dubbed knights like myself, the enchantments of this place have nothing to do with you, and your faculties are unfettered, and you can see things in this castle as they really and truly are, and not as they appear to me.†
Chpt 1.45-46 *unfettered = unrestrained or unhinderedstandard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unfettered means not and reverses the meaning of fettered. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
- "A discerning friend of mine," said Don Quixote, "was of opinion that no one ought to waste labour in glossing verses; and the reason he gave was that the gloss can never come up to the text, and that often or most frequently it wanders away from the meaning and purpose aimed at in the glossed lines; and besides, that the laws of the gloss were too strict, as they did not allow interrogations, nor 'said he,' nor 'I say,' nor turning verbs into nouns, or altering the construction, not to speak of other restrictions and limitations that fetter gloss-writers, as you no doubt know."†
Chpt 2.17-18fetter = restrain or hinder
Definition:
to restrain or hinder
or more archaically:
a shackle for the ankles
or more archaically:
a shackle for the ankles