Meaning of leading-string | Babel Free

Definitions

Strings with which children were formerly guided while they were learning to walk.

historical, plural-normally

Equivalents

Examples

“her lover [...] treated me in all respects as a perfect infant. To say the truth, I wonder she had not insisted on my again wearing leading-strings.”

“Power is a debt to the people: but as yet we walk with the leading-strings of prejudice, strong to confine the steps, which they never should attempt to guide.”

“Every man, however brief or inglorious may have been his academical career, must remember with kindness and tenderness the old university comrades and days. The young man’s life is just beginning: the boy’s leading-strings are cut, and he has all the novel delights and dignities of freedom.”

“Highly protective – Louis wore leading strings until he was seven, a corset for his posture until he was ten – his guardians cocooned him from a wide range of normal childhood experiences.”

CEFR level