Word.ws English Dictionary

fretfully

/ˈfɹɛt.fə.li/

fretfully adverb: in a fretful manner.

Adverb

fretfully (comparative more fretfully, superlative most fretfully)

  1. In a fretful manner.
    • “I am not going to run away, Papa,” said Kitty, fretfully; “if I should ever go to Brighton, I would behave better than Lydia.” “You go to Brighton!—I would not trust you so near it as East Bourne, for fifty pounds![…]”1813 January 27, [Jane Austen], chapter VI, in Pride and Prejudice: […], volume III, London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC, page 124
    • […] rain squalled fretfully against the schoolhouse roof. Although it had stopped by the time the afternoon recess was due, Miss Willie decided that it was too cold and raw for the children to be out a full half hour, so she sent them[…]1994 September 1, Janice Holt Giles, Miss Willie, University Press of Kentucky, →ISBN, page 165

Forms of fretfully

comparativemore fretfully
superlativemost fretfully

Origin of fretfully

From fretful + -ly.

Questions about fretfully

What does fretfully mean?
Fretfully means in a fretful manner.
What part of speech is fretfully?
Fretfully is an adverb.
How do you pronounce fretfully?
Fretfully is pronounced /ˈfɹɛt.fə.li/.

Words near fretfully in the dictionary

  1. Fretalian
  2. fretboard
  3. fretboards
  4. fretful
  5. fretfull
  6. fretfully
  7. fretfulness
  8. fretfulnesses
  9. Fretherne
  10. Fretherne with Saul
  11. fretless

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fretfully (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “fretfully.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fretfully. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.