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/fɹɛt/ · verb
(transitive, obsolete or poetic) 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 and his lore bothe, [...]
Their hearts alreadie fretted and cankered at the very roote, for the last disgrace received.
And could we let a Light into their Bosoms, we should see them generally fretted and cankered with this secret and corroding Venom.
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.
We sometimes perform an operation on the under lip [...] in consequence of / Cancer Labii [cancer of the lips], / Which disease generally arises from the use of a pipe, and the manner in which it happens is this:—the adhesive nature of the clay of which the pipe is made, causes it to adhere to the lip; at length the cuticle becomes torn off, and the continued irritation frets the sore into true cancerous disease.
Had Carry preferred mere wealth, weighed by such a master, to the congenial spirit of her former lover? It fretted the young man even to think of such a possibility. And the visitors had fretted him each in some special point.
to fret the surface of water
Small lightes are ſoone blown out, huge fires abide, / And with the winde in greater furie fret: / The petty ſtreames that paie a dailie det / To their ſalt ſoveraigne with their freſh fals haſt, / Adde to his flowe, but alter not his taſt.
Use fret when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.
Fret means (transitive, obsolete or poetic) Especially when describing animals: to consume, devour, or eat..
Common synonyms include gall, gag, chafe, fray.
The opposite depends on the specific sense.
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 and his lore bothe, [...]
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