It comes from one of the processes of making woollen cloth. After it had been woven, the cloth still contained oil from the fleece, mixed with dirt. It was cleaned in a fulling mill, but then it had to be dried carefully or it would shrink and crease. So the lengths of wet cloth were stretched on wooden frames, and left out in the open for some time. This allowed them to dry and straightened their weave. These frames were the tenters, and the tenter hooks were the metal hooks used to fix the cloth to the frame. At one time, it would have been common in manufacturing areas to see fields full of these frames (older English maps sometimes marked an area as a tenter-field). So it was not a huge leap of the imagination to think of somebody on tenterhooks as being in an state of anxious suspense, stretched like the cloth on the tenter. The tenters have gone, but the meaning has survived. Tenter comes from the Latin tendere, to stretch, via a French intermediate. The word has been in the language since the fourteenth century, and on tenters soon after became a phrase meaning painful anxiety. The exact phrase on tenterhooks seems first to have been used by Tobias Smollett in Roderick Random in 1748.
"On tenterhooks" is an idiomatic expression that means to be in a state of anxious suspense or anticipation. It originates from the textile industry, where fabric was stretched on hooks (tenterhooks) to dry and maintain its shape. When someone is on tenterhooks, they are eagerly waiting for an outcome or news, often feeling uneasy or nervous about what will happen next.
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'.
The movie kept the entire theater on tenterhooks with the epic battle scenes.
The cast of Tenterhooks - 2002 includes: Jayke Aernan Karen Berger Kwame Ngozi Orji Charles Okafor Zack Orji
It means to be anxiously waiting for something to happen.
Tenterhooks are vicious s-shaped hooks, used to stretch linen in the fields, one end snagged through the cloth and the other end looped over a wooden frame. Being on tenterhooks would involve having one snagged through each hand/foot, then pulled out tight - so not particularly comfortable.
The origin of the expression is obscure. It means "ruined everything".
no one knows exactly
Verry Important People
The 1970s is the origin of "in your face", most likely first coming from sports.
it's Anchors Aweigh......
It is a French culinary expression.