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A tenter is a frame on which cloth is stretched during manufacture, so that it may dry evenly. The frame is outfitted with sharp hooks or bent nails that hold the cloth stretched. These hooks, you will not be surprised to learn, are called tenterhooks.

Cloth-stretching being outside of most people's range of experience these days, tenterhook is rarely found except in the figurative expression on tenterhooks, meaning 'in a state of uneasy suspense or painful anxiety'.

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