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fret

Pronunciation: /fɹɛt/

The English word “fret” has 20 meanings listed here.

verb

  1. Especially when describing animals: to consume, devour, or eat.
  2. To chafe or irritate; to worry.
  3. To make rough, to agitate or disturb; to cause to ripple.
  4. In the form fret out: to squander, to waste.
  5. To gnaw; to consume, to eat away.
  6. To mine by agitating or eating away at (ore in the bank of a river).
  7. To be chafed or irritated; to be angry or vexed; to utter peevish expressions through irritation or worry.
  8. To be worn away; to chafe; to fray.
  9. To be anxious, to worry.
  10. To be agitated; to rankle; to be in violent commotion.
  11. To have secondary fermentation (fermentation occurring after the conversion of sugar to alcohol in beers and wine) take place.
  12. To decorate or ornament, especially with an interlaced or interwoven pattern, or (architecture) with carving or relief (raised) work.
  13. To form a pattern on; to variegate.
  14. To cut through with a fretsaw, to create fretwork.

noun

  1. Agitation of the surface of a fluid by fermentation or some other cause; a rippling on the surface of water.
  2. Agitation of the mind marked by complaint and impatience; disturbance of temper; irritation.
  3. Herpes; tetter (“any of various pustular skin conditions”).
  4. The worn sides of riverbanks, where ores or stones containing them accumulate after being washed down from higher ground, which thus indicate to miners the locality of veins of ore.
  5. An ornamental pattern consisting of repeated vertical and horizontal lines, often in relief.
  6. A saltire interlaced with a mascle.

Etymology

From Middle English frēten (“to eat (at), corrode, destroy, annoy”), from Old English fretan (“to eat up, devour; to fret; to break, burst”), from Proto-West Germanic *fraetan, from Proto-Germanic *fraetaną (“to consume, devour, eat up”), from Proto-Germanic *fra- (“for-, prefix meaning ‘completely, fully’”) (from Proto-Indo-European *pro- (“forward, toward”)) + *etaną (“to eat”) (ultimately from…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.