Liliputin-4873

With Melania as ball and chain I hardly can feel myself unfettered ... "
Donald J. Trump
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Liliputins. What, the heck, is this?
http://stihi.ru/2021/11/24/7101

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unfettered

What It Means
Unfettered describes what is not controlled or restricted. It is a synonym of both free and unrestrained.

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

See the entry >

UNFETTERED in Context
"Kevin Desjardins, president of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, said that, before the CRTC, foreign streamers for a decade were allowed unfettered access to the Canadian market, which increasingly put local TV networks at a disadvantage." — Etan Vlessing, The Hollywood Reporter, 13 Dec. 2023


Did You Know?
A fetter is a chain or shackle for the feet (such as the kind sometimes used on a prisoner), or, more broadly, anything that confines or restrains. 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 Irish author James Joyce used the word in his 1916 autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when the character of Cranly recalls to his best friend Stephen what he (Stephen) said he wishes to do in life: "To discover the mode of life or of art whereby your spirit could express itself in unfettered freedom."


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Ball and chain
What's the meaning of the phrase 'Ball and chain'?
A 20th century slang term, meaning wife.

What's the origin of the phrase 'Ball and chain'?
The allusion being to the presumption that a man's wife held him back from doing the things he really wanted to.



Ball and chain

This, of course, refers back to the actual ball and chain, which was a heavy metal ball secured to a prisoner's leg by means of a chain and manacle. The ball and chain was in use in both Britain and the USA by the early 19th century (and possibly much earlier). The earliest citation in print is from The Times, January 1819:

"They sentence the prisoner to receive 50 stripes on his bare back, and be confined with a ball and chain to hard labour for 12 calendar months."

Soon after, in 1821, is this US reference from the Ohio Repository, Canton, Ohio:

"Bread and water, the ball and chain, and even whipping, the convicts prefer to the solitary cell."

Gary Martin - the author of the phrases.org.uk website.
By Gary Martin

Gary Martin is a writer and researcher on the origins of phrases and the creator of the Phrase Finder website. Over the past 26 years more than 700 million of his pages have been downloaded by readers. He is one of the most popular and trusted sources of information on phrases and idioms.