He sounded like any worried father when he fretted aloud about his three sons.
They tried to build a Bridge to Nowhere, fretted about "killing Grandma," and stiffed the IRS.
Last week I fretted that America—and American business, in particular—seemed to be running out of ideas.
“I hear these guys [at Comcast] make GE look like spendthrifts,” fretted an NBC Universal insider.
As I fretted over whether it was safe for her ingest the body paint, she extolled its benefits.
Her lovely arms were raised to support her head, and she stared up at the lamp of many colours that hung from the fretted ceiling.
She fretted and pined and broke her heart for it away there in his world.
Slowly we pushed in among the fretted network of branches and leaves.
Little Rudolph fretted for a time after his nurse and playfellow.
You go not in gleaming steel and fretted mail to meet the bite of blade and crash of battle-ax.
"be peevish or worried," early 12c., from Old English fretan "eat, devour" (in Old English used of monsters and Vikings; in Middle English used of animals' eating), from Proto-Germanic compound *fra- "for-" + *etan "to eat" (cf. Dutch vreton, Old High German freggan, German fressen, Gothic fraitan). Transitive sense of "eat away" is from late 12c. Figurative sense of "irritate, worry, eat one's heart out" is c.1200. Modern German still distinguishes essen for humans and fressen for animals. Related: Fretted; fretting. As a noun, from early 15c.
"ornamental interlaced pattern," late 14c., from Old French frete "interlaced work, trellis work," probably from Frankish *fetur or another Germanic source (cf. Old English fetor, Old High German feggara "fetter") perhaps from notion of "decorative anklet," or of materials "bound" together. The other noun, "ridge on the fingerboard of a guitar," is c.1500 of unknown origin but possibly another sense of Old French frete.
