1.be at the end of your tetherFED UPto be so worried, tired etc that you feel you can no longer deal with a difficult or upsetting situation 忍无可忍;走投无路;一筹莫展
Examples from the Corpus
be at the end of your tether• I had no money, my husband was sick, and I couldn't get a job. I was at the end of my tether.
2.TAa rope or chain that an animal is tied to so that it can only move around within a limited area 〔拴牲畜用的〕系绳,拴链
Examples from the Corpus
tether• In fact, the community was near the end of its financialtether.• At the end of their financial tether, they convertedOutwardBound into a charteryacht.• By then Diana was truly at the end of her tether.• The bull had got loose from his tether.• Five hours later Mr Humble was at the end of his tether.• With all that had happened with Anthony, he was near the end of his tether.• However, at other times I feel at the end of my tether.• Then I reached them, seized them, ripped them free of their tethers, and flung them to the embankment.
tether2 verb [transitiveT]
1.TATIEto tie an animal to a post so that it can only move around within a limited area 拴住,系住〔牲畜〕
tether• He stood up and walked beside her to the edge of the wood where his horse was tethered.• The farmertethered a goat in the field and left it there for the day.• With Amantani fresh in my mind it seemed to me that more than the cattle were tethered here.• At the first steepslope of Great Ararat they tethered their horses to a thorntree and hobbled them.• One Victorianexplorerreported that he could catch these cats and tether them near his food stores to keep the rats down.• My horse had been tethered to a post, but somehow it escaped.• Though designed by the master modernist, Richard Meier, Getty Centerappears intentionally tethered to the past.