tethered

American  

[teth-erd] / ˈtɛð ərd /

adjective

1. fastened or confined with or as if with a rope, chain, or the like to limit the range of movement.

   On this field trip, students will have the opportunity to take a ride in a tethered hot-air balloon.

   Too many lawmakers are partisan, inept, or too lightly tethered to reality.

2. Digital Technology. (of an electronic device) used to enable a wireless internet connection on another nearby device, often a laptop.

   You can browse the web more securely using a tethered phone, because your information is being sent directly through the phone rather than over a public wireless hotspot.

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verb

1. the simple past tense and past participle of tether.

Other Word Forms

• untethered adjective

Etymology

Origin of tethered

tether ( def. ) + -ed ² ( def. )

Explanation

Tethered describes something that's tied up, like a horse that's tethered to a fence or a dog that's tethered to the person who is walking it. Whenever you confine a person or an animal to keep them in one place, they're tethered. A bank robber might leave his hostages tethered together in the vault, and you might keep your fence-jumping dog tethered to the porch when she's out in your yard. The root word is the Old Norse tjoðr, tether, which was used only as a noun to describe the rope that ties animals until the late 15th century, when the verb form developed.

Example Sentences

In its primordial form, liberalism was a political belief that the building block of society is the individual—an idea tethered loosely to the Christian notion that every single human being contains a divine spark.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 10, 2026

Standing beside a row of tethered punts on the River Stour, boatman James Matharu says while he has heard about other businesses getting cancellations, things are "still pretty busy here".

From BBC • Mar. 21, 2026

Hailing from a different strain of the Shia faith, the Houthis are less ideologically tethered to Iran and have long enjoyed more independence from Tehran than other proxies in the Middle East.

From Barron's • Mar. 16, 2026

Although the actor felt tethered to the character while on set, she could easily dissociate at the end of the day.

From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 26, 2026

The dragonflies were still asleep, tethered with cobweb-thin cord, their wings damp with dew.

From "The Amber Spyglass" by Philip Pullman

Related Words

• barred
• blocked
• closed
• confined
• controlled
• defined
• deprived
• prescribed
• reduced
• restrained
• secured
• shortened