Tenters and tenterhooks were commonly used as early as the fourteenth century as import- ant elements in the process of weaving woolen fabric. Starting sometime in the eighteenth century, the phrase “on tenterhooks” came to mean “in suspense,” the way a piece of cloth is suspended from tenterhooks on a tenter. In contemporary literary use, it extends metaphorically to express a range of tension, anxiety, excitement, fear, and anticipation of what is yet to come.