ˈapron-string
The string with which an apron is tied on. apron-string hold or apron-string tenure: tenure of property in virtue of one's wife, or during her life-time only. tied to the apron-strings (of a mother, wife, etc.): unduly controlled by her, wholly under her influence. Also transf. Also apron-string v. trans. rare.
| 1542 Udall Erasm. Apophth. 118 As wise as a gooce, or as wise as her mothers aperen string. 1647 Ward Simp. Cobler 67 Apron-string tenure is very weak. 1678 Ray Prov. (ed. 2) 226 To hold by the Apron-strings. i.e. in right of his wife. 1698 J. Fryer New Acc. E. India & Persia iii. iii. 115 They..would subjugate us, as they do all others that are harness'd witte the Apron-strings of Trade. 1750 Ellis Mod. Husb. VI. ii. 118 [A man] being possessed of a house and large orchard by apron-string-hold, felled almost all his fruit trees, because he every day expected the death of his sick wife. 1804 Mrs. Barbauld Richardson I. 160 All her fortune in her own power—a very apron-string tenure. 1825 Eng. Life I. 165 A man of your inches ought to be above making such an apron-string booby of yourself. 1848 A. Brontë Tenant of Wildfell Hall I. iii. 44 Even at his age, he ought not to be always tied to his mother's apron string. 1849 Macaulay Hist. Eng. II. 649 He could not submit to be tied to the apron strings even of the best of wives. 1912 A. S. M. Hutchinson Happy Warrior iv. ii. 196 That he should submit to be thus chained, thus apron-stringed! 1960 Times 26 Apr. 16/2 The drama..points insistently, in the last two acts, away from Rimsky-Korsakov's apron-strings. |