leading strings
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See also: leading-strings
English
Noun
leading strings pl (plural only)
- Strings or straps by which a child is supported when learning to walk.
- 1839, Edgar Allan Poe, William Wilson:
- Thenceforward my voice was a household law; and at an age when few children have abandoned their leading-strings, I was left to the guidance of my own will, and became, in all but name, the master of my own actions.
- (figurative) Guidance given during childhood.
- 1827, The Boston Lyceum, volumes 1-2, page 206:
- In the hey-day of youth, and hardly out of the leading strings of a school, he formed an intention to nuptialize, and joined heart and hand with sweet Ann Hathaway at the age of eighteen and a half.