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

As he rises and swishes, the designs of an NBA defensive scheme now lay in waste on the hardwood, as useful as broken fetters.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 15, 2021

A great silence descended, and the fetters of enchantment fell away from Selitos.

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

It’s a place I can go to stay motivated, stay on track, keep everything fettered and balanced in my life.

From Slate ● Aug. 19, 2020

No refuge between those black stalks, even if she weren’t fettered.

From "The Underground Railroad: A Novel" by Colson Whitehead

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

It would not do to let Mr. Standish think that even El Diablo Cojuelo could manage to keep Don Carlos a prisoner without fettering him.

From Bandit Love by Juanita Savage

Sir Camarin departed, her release From the remorse and fettering will seem Sweet as a vista into fairyland.

From Yolanda of Cyprus by Cale Young Rice