Английский Этимологический словарь - tenter

- c.1300, "wooden framework for stretching cloth," probably somehow connected with L. tentorium "tent made of stretched skins," from tentus "stretched," variant pp. of tendere "to stretch," from PIE base *ten- "stretch." The compound tenterhook (1480) is "one of the hooks that holds cloth on a tenter." The figurative phrase on tenterhooks "in painful suspense" is from 1748; earlier to be on tenters (1533).