unfettered

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adjective

un·​fet·​tered ˌən-ˈfe-tərd 

: not controlled or restricted : free, unrestrained

… unfettered access to the Senate.

—Joshua Miller

… an approach to reading which combined passion and empathy with free-ranging enthusiasm and unfettered curiosity.

—Jonathan Keates

If popular government is about anything, it is about the unfettered right of the voters to choose their leaders.

—Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

… few voices in modern American intellectual life have challenged the primacy of the unfettered individual.

—Walter Shapiro

unfettered

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past tense and past participle of unfetter

Did you know?

A fetter is a chain or shackle for the feet (such as the kind sometimes used on a prisoner), or, more broadly, anything that confines or restrains. Fetter and unfetter both function as verbs in English with contrasting literal meanings having to do with the putting on of and freeing from fetters; they likewise have contrasting figurative extensions having to do with the depriving and granting of freedom. The adjective unfettered resides mostly in the figurative, with the word typically describing someone or something unrestrained in progress or spirit. This is how Irish author James Joyce used the word in his 1916 autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when the character of Cranly recalls to his best friend Stephen what he (Stephen) said he wishes to do in life: "To discover the mode of life or of art whereby your spirit could express itself in unfettered freedom."

Examples of unfettered in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Adjective

Barber argued that unfettered capitalism and the backlash to it, which was increasingly expressed through forms of fundamentalist extremism, although in contest with each other, were both a danger to democracies. — Ishaan Tharoor, New Yorker, 30 Sep. 2026

Anyone who wants to watch, from the press to advocates to families to just causal observers, must have that unfettered ability. — New York Daily News Editorial Board, New York Daily News, 25 Sep. 2026

But the Knights didn’t take long to respond in the second half, as Watson took a handoff and raced 64 yards unfettered for his second touchdown of the game, giving UCF a 27-24 lead eight seconds into the third quarter. — Matt Murschel, The Orlando Sentinel, 20 Sep. 2026

And last Sunday, in these pages, Coulter lamented losing his unfettered discretion on where to shelve books. — Robert Steinbuch, Arkansas Online, 18 Sep. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

Adjective

1602, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for unfettered

• bettered
• fettered
• lettered
• unlettered

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