Verb

To devour, consume; eat.

* (rfdate)— Piers Ploughman.

Adam freet of that fruit, And forsook the love of our Lord.

* Wiseman

Many wheals arose, and fretted one into another with great excoriation.

(transitive, and, intransitive) To gnaw, consume, eat away.

To be worn away; to chafe; to fray.

A wristband frets on the edges.

To cut through with fretsaw, create fretwork.

To chafe or irritate; to worry.

To worry or be anxious.

* , chapter=5

, title= Mr. Pratt's Patients , passage=Of all the queer collections of humans outside of a crazy asylum, it seemed to me this sanitarium was the cup winner. […] When you're well enough off so's you don't have to fret about anything but your heft or your diseases you begin to get queer, I suppose.}}

To be vexed; to be chafed or irritated; to be angry; to utter peevish expressions.

*

*:Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.

* Dryden

He frets , he fumes, he stares, he stamps the ground.

To make rough, agitate, or disturb; to cause to ripple.

to fret the surface of water

To be agitated; to be in violent commotion; to rankle.

Rancour frets in the malignant breast.

(music) To press down the string behind a fret.

To ornament with raised work; to variegate; to diversify.

* Spenser

whose skirt with gold was fretted all about

* Shakespeare

Yon grey lines, / That fret the clouds, are messengers of day.