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

The fetters chafed at her wrists and at her pride.

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

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

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

In doing so, the British actress and writer found Mitford celebrating in Linda somebody who “isn’t scared of or fettered by the conventional rules of how to behave,” she said in a recent interview.

From New York Times ● Jul. 23, 2021

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

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

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

Good heavens, the world's bad enough without fettering him all his life with a hideous stigma.

From Plays: Lady Frederick, The Explorer, A Man of Honor by W. Somerset (William Somerset) Maugham

We are content in paying tribute to a criminal Government for pressing upon our necks the yoke and fettering hopelessly our minds and souls––and my brave Phœnicians, ah, how bravely they thought and fought.

From The Book of Khalid by Ameen Fares Rihani

In sacred subjects the law was inflexible, and religion, which has frequently done so much for the development and direction of taste in sculpture, had the effect of fettering the genius of Egyptian artists.

From Museum of Antiquity A Description of Ancient Life by T. L. (Thomas Louis) Haines