Tether

Tether (pronounced teth-er)

(1) A rope, chain, or the like, by which an animal is fastened to a fixed object so as to limit its range of movement; a rope, cable etc. that holds something in place whilst allowing some movement.

(2) The utmost length to which one can go in action; the utmost extent or limit of ability or resources.

(3) To fasten or confine with or as if with a tether.

(4) In digital technology, to use an electronic device (typically a phone) to enable a wireless internet connection on another nearby device (typically a laptop).

(5) In idiomatic use, as “at the end of one's tether”, to be at the limit of one's resources, patience, or strength.

(6) In nautical jargon, a strong rope or line that connects a sailor's safety harness to a boat's jackstay.

(7) The cardinal number three in an old counting system used in Teesdale and Swaledale (a variant of tethera).

1350-1400: From the Middle English tether & teder, (rope for fastening an animal), said by some to be from the Old English tēoder and/or the Old Norse tjóðr (tjothr, from the Danish tøjr), both from the Proto-Germanic teudrą or teudran (rope; cord; shaft) of uncertain origin but possibly from the primitive Indo-European dewtro-, from dew- (to tie), or from the primitive Indo-European dewk- (to pull).  It was cognate with the North German Tüder (tether for binding the cattle), the Middle Dutch tūder & tether and the Old High German zeotar (pole of a wagon)

Most etymologists are unconvinced by the link to Old English and conclude a Scandinavian source was most likely but no documentary evidence exists.  The circumstantial evidence is that the Old Norse tjoðr (tether) is certainly from the Proto-Germanic teudran and was the source also of the Danish tøir, the Old Swedish tiuther, the Swedish tjuder, the Old Frisian tiader, the Middle Dutch tuder, the Dutch tuier (line, rope) and the Old High German zeotar; the ultimate root of all was the primitive Indo-European deu- (to fasten) + the mysterious suffix -tro.  The original meaning (confining grazing animals by a rope or cord) dates from the second half of the fourteenth century and the familiar figurative sense of "measure of one's limitations" is attested from the 1570s.  Perhaps surprisingly, there appears to be no mention in English of the words describing the reverse procedure (untethered; untethering) until 1775.  The verb emerged in the late fourteenth century (implied in tethering) in the sense of "confine by a tether," and was used originally of grazing animals as a direct development of the noun.  The figurative use was contemporary with this.

HG Wells’ (1866–1946) last book was Mind at the End of its Tether (1945), a slim volume, best remembered for the fragment “…everything was driving anyhow to anywhere at a steadily increasing velocity”, seemingly describing a world which had become more complicated, chaotic and terrifying than anything he had prophesized in his fiction. In this it’s often contrasted with the spirit of cheerful optimism and forward-looking stoicism of the book he published a few months earlier, The Happy Turning (1945), but that may be a misreading.  Mind at the End of its Tether is a curious text, easy to read yet difficult to reduce to a theme; in his review, George Orwell (1903-1950) called it “disjointed” and it does have a quality of vagueness, some chapters hinting at despair for all humanity, others suggesting hope for the future.

Lindsay Lohan tethered in bondage scene in I Know Who Killed Me (2007).

It’s perhaps the publication date the tints the opinions of some.  Although released some three months after the first use of atomic bombs in August 1945, publishing has lead-times and Wells hadn’t heard of the A-bomb at the time of writing although, he had in 1914 predicted such a device in The World Set Free.  In writing Mind at the End of its Tether, Wells, the great seer of science, wasn’t in dark despair at news of science’s greatest achievement, nuclear fission, but instead a dying man disappointed about the terrible twentieth century which, at the end of the nineteenth, had offered such promise.