Word.ws English Dictionary

fretless

fretless adjective: of a stringed instrument, not having frets on the fingerboard.

Adjective

fretless (not comparable)

  1. Of a stringed instrument, not having frets on the fingerboard.
  2. Without worries.
    • You would live longer and happier if you would only be quiet and fretless.1895, Virginia Reed, Daily Cheer for All the Year, Philadelphia: G.W. Jacobs & Co., →OCLC, page 18
    • Will the fretless world be happy or will restless nature shout / For some old-time fret or worry just to rave and kick about?1907 August, J. W. Foley, quotee, “The Menace of Reform”, in Texas Medical News, volume 16, number 10, Austin: Texas Medical News Publishing Co., →ISSN, page 525

Noun

fretless (plural fretlesses)

  1. A stringed instrument without frets on the fingerboard.
    • Read's creations have covered just about all of bass-dom, from vintage-style 4-strings to 32-position fretlesses to 25-fret 8-strings tuned F♯BEADGCF.2003, Jim Roberts, American Basses, San Francisco: Backbeat Books, →ISBN, page 150
    • No other machine can produce sounds which are so often described as 'singing', 'purring', 'humming', and 'ringing'. But this array of mellifluous notes doesn't come cheaply: even those who have mastered the fretless to moderate levels of proficiency have been obliged to spend many hundreds of hours...2006, Adrian Ashton, The Bass Handbook, San Francisco: Backbeat Books, →ISBN, page 47

Examples of fretless in a sentence

  • Is it not worth while to try and approximate, if we cannot hope to attain, the ideal of fretless, fussless, and unworrying poise?1913, George Lincoln Walton, Calm Yourself, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, →OCLC, page 7:
  • Many fretlesses, especially less expensive models that mimic a fretted counterpart, have fretted-bass nut slots.2008, Jonathan Hererra, “ASK BP”, in Chris Jisi, editor, Bass Player Presents The Fretless Bass, Milwaukee: Backbeat Books, →ISBN:

Antonyms of fretless

Forms of fretless

pluralfretlesses

Origin of fretless

From fret + -less.

Words formed from fretless

Phrases with fretless

Questions about fretless

What does fretless mean?
Fretless means of a stringed instrument, not having frets on the fingerboard.
How do you use fretless in a sentence?
Is it not worth while to try and approximate, if we cannot hope to attain, the ideal of fretless, fussless, and unworrying poise?
What part of speech is fretless?
Fretless can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near fretless in the dictionary

  1. fretfully
  2. fretfulness
  3. fretfulnesses
  4. Fretherne
  5. Fretherne with Saul
  6. fretless
  7. fretless bass
  8. fretless basses
  9. fretlesses
  10. fretman
  11. fretmen

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fretless (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.

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