unfettered

adjective

un·​fet·​tered ˌən-ˈfe-tərd 

: not controlled or restricted : free, unrestrained

unfettered access to the Senate.

—Joshua Miller

… an approach to reading which combined passion and empathy with free-ranging enthusiasm and unfettered curiosity.

—Jonathan Keates

If popular government is about anything, it is about the unfettered right of the voters to choose their leaders.

—Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

… few voices in modern American intellectual life have challenged the primacy of the unfettered individual.

—Walter Shapiro

Did you know?

A fetter is a chain or shackle for the feet (such as the kind sometimes used on a prisoner), or, more broadly, anything that confines or restrains. Fetter and unfetter both function as verbs in English with contrasting literal meanings having to do with the putting on of and freeing from fetters; they likewise have contrasting figurative extensions having to do with the depriving and granting of freedom. The adjective unfettered resides mostly in the figurative, with the word typically describing someone or something unrestrained in progress or spirit. This is how Irish author James Joyce used the word in his 1916 autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when the character of Cranly recalls to his best friend Stephen what he (Stephen) said he wishes to do in life: "To discover the mode of life or of art whereby your spirit could express itself in unfettered freedom."

Examples of unfettered in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Eleanor’s view There’s a key difference between this brewing Palantir fight and last year’s surveillance battle: Trump was, at least briefly, aligned with conservatives in opposition to unfettered expansion of that wiretapping law. —Eleanor Mueller, semafor.com, 5 June 2025

Again, Warren and Banks plainly fear that with unfettered access to Nvidia products, Chinese producers will make great leaps in the AI space that Nvidia is in many ways the face of. —John Tamny, Forbes.com, 2 June 2025

Establishing Starbase as a company town helps SpaceX attain nearly unfettered permission to build, test or launch from its industrial complex on the Texas Gulf Coast. —Lora Kolodny, CNBC, 29 May 2025

The Phoenician Scheme tethers the filmmaker’s existential interests (the unfettered power of the billionaire class, unchecked greed and environmentalism) to the kind of poignant humanistic narrative that’s been missing from his latest offerings. —Lovia Gyarkye, HollywoodReporter, 18 May 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1602, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for unfettered

• bettered
• fettered
• lettered
• unlettered

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