Word of the Day

: May 19, 2018

unfettered

adjective un-FET-erd

What It Means

: free, unrestrained

unfettered in Context

The biographer has been given unfettered access to the family's collection of personal correspondence.

"We are both deeply committed to facilitating the restoration and preservation of open and unfettered political dialogue." — Howard Dean and Newt Gingrich, The Chicago Daily Herald, 17 Apr. 2018

Did You Know?

A fetter is a chain or shackle for the feet (as used on a prisoner), or, more broadly, anything that confines or restrains. The word derives from Middle English feter and shares an ancestor with Old English fōt, meaning "foot." 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 English poet and clergyman John Donne used the word in his early 17th-century work The Progress of the Soule: "To an unfetterd soules quick nimble hast / Are falling stars, and hearts thoughts, but slow pac'd."