leading strings

[ lee-ding ]

plural noun

1. strings for leading and supporting a child learning to walk.
2. excessively restraining guidance:

   His parents tried to keep him in leading strings, but he finally married and moved away.

Word History and Origins

Origin of leading strings¹

First recorded in 1670–80

Example Sentences

“It was still not uncommon for pregnant women to prepare themselves for death to the extent of drawing up conduct letters for children, yet unborn or still in leading strings,” Vickery says.

From Los Angeles Times

Several Gypsy men were on horseback, riding ahead of or behind their wagons or leading strings of mules and horses.

From Literature

Carnesford, now a good-sized village, had once been a tiny hamlet, an appanage of Carne's Hold, but it had long since grown out of leading strings, and though it still regarded The Carnes with something of its old feudal feeling, it now furnished no suit or service unless paid for so doing.

From Project Gutenberg

He never would, if he could, render any service to liberty; he cannot understand the elements and first principles of popular freedom; to him the people is always, as a child, to be kept in leading strings and guided, and, if at all boisterous or naughty, smartly birched and put in a dark corner.

From Project Gutenberg

It was a revelation of an unpleasant kind to find himself in leading strings; the state of dependence of which the abb� hinted long ago, to be ordered like a lacquey, to be threatened and browbeaten in the presence of others--he, Marquis de Gange, above all, under the eyes of the affinity, and to be powerless to return blow for blow.

From Project Gutenberg