fetter

At its core, it serves to moderate the thrill for new ideas and fetter decision-making with long debates.

From Slate ● May 16, 2017

At another point, the actor becomes one of two mortarboard-wearing orators who pull at the straps that fetter two shocked listeners.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 19, 2016

And the commission stated it was not seeking to fetter the charity's discretion to fund Cage "for all time regardless of changing circumstances".

From BBC ● Oct. 21, 2015

Huang is something else: a person at war with all the constraints that would fetter him to anything less than an identity capacious enough to contain all his contradictions and ambivalence.

From New York Times ● Feb. 3, 2015

In the black iron fetter about his wrist, the ruby seemed to pulse.

From "A Dance with Dragons" by George R. R. Martin

“We seek a new revolution,” he said, “not less important, perhaps, in its consequences than that of 1776—a revolution in letters; a shaking off of the fetters of the mind.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 21, 2025

"I just couldn't break away from the fetters."

From Reuters ● Apr. 13, 2023

Its stage is where King Kong broke his fetters in the 1933 movie.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 8, 2023

Through religion, we are often invited to relive a past trauma as if it is unfolding perpetually in the present; and through the repetition of that trauma, transcend the fetters of its pain.

From Washington Post ● Sep. 8, 2021

But Selitos still felt the fetters of enchantment binding him.

From "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss

Both were fettered by entrenched social expectations, leaving little room for anyone who wanted to chart a different course.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 8, 2026

New emblem’s meh, the ex-term smelt; The bevy, recent-Red-Type-Pelt — They’re fettered, hexed; the shell needs shed.

From Washington Post ● Nov. 10, 2022

Despite efforts from the Valkyries and Odin’s ravens, this Viking action art piece is fettered to the ground by the demands of the studio gods.

From Seattle Times ● Apr. 18, 2022

“With a bigger company, I can do more things and not be fettered by the small business mentality,” he said.

From New York Times ● Apr. 26, 2021

On the ground, the jockey was fettered and muted, moving in slow motion, the world a sensory vacuum after the tenfold high of racing speed.

From "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" by Laura Hillenbrand

With iron censorship fettering the Press last week, shocking reports circulated by word of mouth throughout the Peninsula and the Isles of Greece.

From Time Magazine Archive

In fact, this is not aid but a handout of leftovers from the master's table made conditional upon fettering obligations .

From Time Magazine Archive

Do not suppose, that in thus appealing to the ancients, I am throwing back the world two thousand years, and fettering Philosophy with the reasonings of paganism.

From The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin by John Henry Newman

And thus will you o'ercome him, fettering His mind with gifts with which his ears are charm'd.

From The Deipnosophists, or Banquet of the Learned of Athen?us by Athen?us

No wonder she flies from his fettering arms!

From Three Women by Ella Wheeler Wilcox