ˈleading-string
Chiefly pl.
1. Strings with which children used to be guided and supported when learning to walk. to be in leading-strings: to be still a child; fig. to be in a state of dependence or pupilage.
| 1677 Wycherley Plain Dealer i. i. 1 But I'll have no Leading-strings, I can walk alone. a 1685 Otway Compl. Muse xiii. Wks. 1727 II. 366 In little time the Hell-bred Brat..Without his Leading-strings could walk. 1779 T. A. Mann in Lett. Lit. Men (Camden) 417, I live in a Country where good Philosophy is still in its leading-strings. 1780 Cowper Progr. Err. 531 One that still needs his leading-string and bib. 1809 W. Irving Knickerb. (1861) 69 He..gallops through mud and mire..merely to show that he is a lad of spirit, and out of his leading-strings. 1851 Mayhew Lond. Labour 317 Thus the ‘model’ lodgers are kept, as it were, in leading-strings. 1884 Lowell Wks. (1890) VI. 135 His [Cervantes'] genius soon broke away from the leading-strings of a plot that denied free scope to his conceptions. |
2. A cord for leading an animal. Cf. leading rein.
| 1859 Archæol. Cant. II. 106 At the feet of each crouches a dog with knotted leading-strings. 1886 Ruskin Præterita I. v. 159 Led..by a riding master with a leading string. |
Hence leading-stringed pa. pple., nonce-wd., guided with, or kept within, leading-strings.
| 1859 Thackeray Virgin. II. xiv. 104 A powerful mettlesome young Achilles ought not to be leading-stringed by women too much. |