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tether

UK/ˈtɛðə/US/ˈtɛðəɹ/
nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,821 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: tethers

A tether is a rope tying an animal to one spot. On a tether, break the tether, the end of my tether.

The end of my tether is the phrase everybody knows and means having no patience left, from an animal that has walked as far as the rope allows. Tethering a phone is a modern use: sharing its connection with another device.

Definitions of tether

  1. 1nountetherA rope tying an animal to one spot.B2+

    “The goat was tied to a post with a long tether so it could graze.”

tether is a rope.

Where it comes from

Old Norse tjothr and Old English teoder both name the rope, from a Germanic root.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *dewtro-

  2. Proto-Germanic

    *teudrą — rope; cord; shaft

  3. Old Norse

    tjóðr

  4. Old English

    *tēoder

  5. Middle English

    tether

  6. English, today

    tether

From Middle English tether, teder, from Old English tēoder and/or Old Norse tjóðr (> Danish tøjr, Swedish tjuder); both from Proto-Germanic teudrą (“rope; cord; shaft”), of uncertain origin. Perhaps from Proto-Indo-European dewtro-, from Proto-Indo-European dew- (“to tie”), or from Proto-Indo-European dewk- (“to pull”). Cognate with North German Tüder (“tether for binding the cattle”), Swedish tjuder (“tether for binding cattle”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

tether in the wild

  • The main component would be a cable (also called a tether) anchored to the surface and extending into space.

    Space elevator

  • With the tether deployed, climbers (crawlers) could repeatedly climb up and down the tether by mechanical means, releasing their cargo to and from orbit.

    Space elevator

  • A skyhook is a proposed momentum exchange tether that aims to reduce the cost of placing payloads into low Earth orbit.

    Skyhook (structure)

  • A momentum exchange tether is a kind of space tether that could theoretically be used as a launch system, or to change spacecraft orbits.

    Momentum exchange tether

  • The transfer of momentum to the released object will cause the rotating tether to lose energy, and thus lose velocity and altitude.

    Momentum exchange tether

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.