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

The Office of Internal Audit reports directly to the Board of Education and has full, unfettered access to all records and data. —Reader Commentary, Baltimore Sun, 6 Feb. 2026

If no new agreement is reached, the treaty will expire, opening the door to an unfettered buildup of nuclear weapons, experts say. —Cybele Mayes-Osterman, USA Today, 5 Feb. 2026

And yet the baying online would suggest this is more than regret, that we have all been denied some marvellous experience and the final hours of the transfer window failed to deliver on its apparent promise of unfettered theatre and fun. —Megan Feringa, New York Times, 4 Feb. 2026

Egypt has not allowed unfettered access to its territory through the crossing. —Somayeh Malekian, ABC News, 2 Feb. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1602, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for unfettered

• bettered
• fettered
• lettered
• unlettered

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