tenterhooks
IdiomsExample Sentences
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Is it why markets are rocking, why oil shipments are cut back from the Strait of Hormuz, why the world hangs on tenterhooks of suspense over what happens next?
From Slate ● Mar. 4, 2026
Murase said she felt "immense joy" at her gold but admitted she had been on tenterhooks until her final run.
From Barron's ● Feb. 9, 2026
As a way to find joy, she said, in a time when news and world events have us all on tenterhooks.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 26, 2025
"We were on tenterhooks really, just watching the door for what seemed like forever."
From BBC ● Mar. 20, 2025
For a while we were indignant because no one from the office came upstairs the entire morning; Mr. Kleiman left us on tenterhooks until eleven-thirty.
From "The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
