fretteth

Verb

fret (third-person singular simple present frets, present participle fretting, simple past fretted or (archaic) fret or (archaic) frate, past participle fretted or (archaic) fret or (archaic) frate or (usually in compounds) fretten)

1. (obsolete, poetic, transitive) Especially when describing animals: to consume, devour, or eat.
   • At the beginning God gaue the dome him ſelfe / That Adam and Eue and all them that ſewed, / Shuld dye down right and dwell in pyne after, / If that they touched a tree and the frute eaten, / Adam afterwarde agaynſt hys defence / freet of that frute, and forſake as it were, / The loue of our lord...[c. 1378-9, [William Langland], “Passus. xviii. de visione”, in The Vision of Pierce Plowman [...] (Cr, B-text) (in Middle English), London: […] Roberte Crowley, […], published 1550, →OCLC, folio...
2. (transitive) To chafe or irritate; to worry.
   • A Perſon of Honour, of a full Body abounding with ſharp Humours, was ſeized with an Herpes on his right Leg. [...] [I]t inflamed and ſwelled very much, many Wheals aroſe, and fretted one into another, with great Excoriation.1676, Richard Wiseman, “[A Treatise of Tumors.] Of an Herpes”, in Severall Chirurgical Treatises, London: Printed by E. Flesher and J[ohn] Macock, for R[ichard] Royston bookseller to His Most Sacred...
3. (transitive) To make rough, to agitate or disturb; to cause to ripple.
   • the brooks fretting down their channels
4. (transitive) In the form fret out: to squander, to waste.
   • Yorke hereupon conſults with his ſpeciall friends; [...] how Yorke might get the Crowne of England, and for that cauſe how to ruine or fret out the Duke of Sommerſet; who ſtanding, they were to looke for ſtrong oppoſition.1611, John Speed, “Henrie the Sixth, King of England, and France, Lord of Ireland: The Three and Fiftieth Monarch of England, His Raigne, Actes, and Issve”, in The History of Great Britaine under the...
5. (ambitransitive) To gnaw; to consume, to eat away.
   • VVhen thrid of life is almoſt fret in twaine,
     To giue it ſtrength breeds thankes, and wonders too.1593, anonymous author, The Life and Death of Iacke Straw […], →OCLC, Act IV
6. (ambitransitive) To mine by agitating or eating away at (ore in the bank of a river).
   • Aided by its burden of detrital matter, the river frets away the rocks along its banks and thus tends to widen its channel; while, at the same time, the coarse sediment scratching along the bottom, helps to tear it up and thus deepen the bed of the river.1897, Thomas Henry Huxley, Physiography: An Introduction to the Study of Nature, page 134

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