Word up!

TENDER HOOKS Commonly confused phrases and linguistic muddles If you’re in a state of nervous tension, you might say that you’re ‘on tender hooks’. You’re probably wondering what a tender hook is, especially as hooks need to have some kind of rigidity. And this saying doesn’t have anything to do with other meanings of the word ‘tender’, such as money (‘legal tender’) or steam trains (where a ‘tender’ would contain water and coal). That’s because you should actually be on ‘tenterhooks’. Wondering what a tenterhook is? We won’t leave you hanging: it’s a type of nail used on a tenter. And a tenter is a frame historically used in cloth production. After washing, the cloth would be stretched out on the tenter, using tenterhooks, to prevent it deforming as it dried. That’s…

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The Simple Things (Digital) - 1 Issue, February 2024

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