There’s nothing like a misused word to grab my attention. Today I heard a BBC radio foreign correspondent, who should have known better, say he was “on tender hooks”.
Of course, that should have been “tenterhooks”. But it got me thinking and sent me off to the big red dictionary.
I was surprised. I always thought tenterhooks were some sort of gruesome hooks for hanging up bleeding meat carcasses. But no, they couldn’t be cleaner or more civilised.
Apparently a “tenter” is a frame for stretching cloth – not really so different from the camping tent, if you think about it. And a “tenterhook” was a shark hooked nail used on such a frame. The word probably originates in the Latin, tendere, to stretch.
The above picture of tenterhooks is from the excellent Witney Blanket Story website, which gives a great insight into the making of woollen cloth in Oxfordshire for 300 years…
Association of ideas being what it is, my mind moved on from tenterhooks to petards – and again I wrongly thought I knew what a “petard” was. You will of course recall the Shakespeare line “hoist with his own petard” from Hamlet. I guess I was getting confused with the “bare bodkin” from the same play, as I always thought a “petard” was a small sword, just as a bodkin is a dagger. So if someone was hoist with his own petard I visualised him being lifted into the air on the point of his own sword.
Wrong, and quite topically so at this Guy Fawkes time of year. For a petard is a firework or a case containing explosives, used to break in doors etc in Shakespeare’s time (amusingly from the Latin pedere, to break wind). To be hoist with your own petard means to be blown up by your own explosive or caught out by your own trick.
You learn something new every day…
Bryan Garner, in “Modern American Usage,” points out that, since the line from Hamlet is “hoist with his own petar,” nearly everyone who tries to use it gets it slightly wrong.
First, “hoist” is the pp of the archaic verb “hoise” = to lift aloft. Most modern writers update the pp to “hoisted” (2 to 1). Then most writers change the possessive pronoun to something like “their” or “one’s.” Folks often use “by” instead of “with” (4 to 1) or even “on” (as if a petard were a sword). Finally, Shakespeare used “petar,” an archaic variant of “petard.”
Garner still concedes that it would be pedantic to insist on the original expression. He concludes that “hoisted by his own petard” shouldn’t be labeled incorrect, since it’s used four times as much as “hoist with his own petard.”
Thanks for expanding on that! Shakespeare is so rich in words to talk about. I must admit I once got confused between a petard and a bare bodkin, which I think IS a small sword/dagger. Although when I was a child I actually used a bodkin regularly as my mother was a bit of a needlewoman and it was/is a big, blunt sewing/threading needle.
I always thought “bodkin” sounded vaguely dirty, like “codpiece.” Those Elizabethans were always mentioning the two. 🙂
Thank you for the education. I appreciate your thoroughly researched writing, and I have shared it on facebook.
What a wonderful world this is! We can spread accurate history and knowledge instantaneously to enrich our daily lives. Of course, the opposite is true. That’s why I double-checked your definitions of tenterhook, petard and bodkin via dictionary.com. A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes, as Mark Twain put it (and as Shakespeare dramatized through the Rumour character at the beginning of Henry IV, Part 2: http://www.william-shakespeare.info/act1-script-text-henry-iv-part-2.htm).
Please keep sharing your journalistic talents, or else the mispronunciations, malapropisms and misunderstandings prevail. Your writing makes the world a more enlightened place.
Sending you good vibes from California)))))))
Justin Bass
Tenterhooks appeared in today’s (November 10,2016) New York Times crossword puzzle, which got me looking for the exact meaning of the word. This is a very nice explanation, thank you.
No problem, I am keen on crosswords, too!
Glad a post from six years ago is still being read 🙂
Happily your 2009 post is being read once again, as I found the link on your sidebar. Petard I remembered from notes on Hamlet, but as for tenterhooks – embarassingly I had never even asked myself what the origin was. Glad to know it was something so pleasant… and useful!
Thank you!
I suppose as my posts aren’t usually topical, they tend not to go out of date…
Best wishes 🙂
Evergreen content makes the best content 🙂
Still being read 14 years on
This is interesting. I only recently became aware that it was tenterhooks rather than tender hooks after a post by VeryBritishProblems (@SoVeryBritish) on Twitter.
When I researched it – as one does! – I found articles about tenterhooks which were used in the wool industry to stop fabric from shrinking.
However, talking with my knowledgeable Mum, she mentioned meat hooks and carcasses being hung out to cure. There doesn’t seems to be much in Google along these lines. Could it be a common term that’s not documented?
Possibly. What a rich language we have!
Thank you for the insights 🙂