on tenterhooks.

In anxious suspense while waiting to learn what will happen.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• keep someone on tenterhooks
• leave everyone on tenterhooks
• wait on tenterhooks

On the page

The delayed rescue bulletin kept the village on tenterhooks.

We were on tenterhooks until the last climber checked in.

Her unanswered message left him on tenterhooks all evening.

Usage notes

Primary category: fear. Focuses on waiting, not an immediate startle. Tenterhooks are not tender hooks; the idiom retains the plural. Fixed prepositional idiom; tenterhooks stays plural and is not inflected for degree.