(v. t.) To rub; to wear off, or wear into shreds, by rubbing; to fret, as cloth; as, a deer is said to fray her head.
(v. i.) To rub.
(v. i.) To wear out or into shreads, or to suffer injury by rubbing, as when the threads of the warp or of the woof wear off so that the cross threads are loose; to ravel; as, the cloth frays badly.
(n.) A fret or chafe, as in cloth; a place injured by rubbing.
Example Sentences:
(1) The appointment of the mayor of London's brother, who formally becomes a Cabinet Office minister, is one of a series of moves designed to strengthen the political operation in Downing Street and to patch up the prime minister's frayed links with the Conservative party.
(2) In comparison with the controls, the isoproterenol-treated (Group A), the Ca-treated (Group B), and the diltiazem-posttreated (Groups E and F) showed severe myocardial cell damage, such as sarcolemmal disruption, mitochondrial swelling, intramitochondrial electron-dense granules, membranous structures along mitochondrial cristae, thickening or close packing of the Z-lines, separation of cell junctions, frayed myofibrils, clumping of chromatin, and intracellular fluid accumulation.
(3) Carefully pull the frayed seam over the original seam line and pin in place.
(4) Miliband steps back into the fray as ex-Labour MP Chris Mullin said the party should bring back "grown ups" such as ex-chancellor Alistair Darling, while Tony Blair's former spin chief Alastair Campbell said Labour had made a mistake by failing to defend Gordon Brown's economic record.
(5) De Blasio and Bratton have promised to mend the frayed relations between police officers and the city's minority communities.
(6) Failing to get her voice heard above the fray is the biggest danger.
(7) On the frayed, far south-western outskirts of Bogotá, the largest, poorest and most violent barrio in the Colombian capital stretches into the haze up the mountainside as far as the eye can see.
(8) But when I check in a week later, at the height of the expenses storm, the optimism is sounding a tad frayed.
(9) These included torn or frayed menisci and those which were displaced, usually in a mesial direction.
(10) The shops on Main Street were mostly empty, paint fraying on the window panes.
(11) The fraying may be a consequence of proteolytic processing of the precursor of the inhibitor protein during entry into the mitochondrion.
(12) Relations between the bank and the Cambodian government have frayed over plans by a property developer to fill in a lake in the middle of Phnom Penh to build luxury flats and high-end shops.
(13) The Al Ahly ultras say they will rejoin the fray when the time is right.
(14) If you only have an 20cm tin you can use that instead, but don't use all the batter – about 80% will suffice – otherwise you'll end up with a volcanic overspill, cake soldered to the floor of the oven and a frayed temper.
(15) Laszlo Andor, the EU's employment commissioner, warned that record unemployment and fraying welfare systems in southern Europe risk creating a new divide in the continent.
(16) But we may be permitted to hope there is now a chance that something of the old Canada, committed to moderation and multiculturalism at home and to multilateralism and cooperation abroad, will re-emerge from the fray.
(17) Type II alveolar cells increased in number and showed vacuolization, fraying and membrane disruption of their lamellar inclusions.
(18) But it's fair to say a fondness for sniping games marks me out as a coward who'd rather take potshots from a distance than actually climb down from the tree and enter the fray like a man, a theory backed up by the fact that while I love sniping, I detest "stealth games" (because it's scary when you get caught) and "boss fights" where you have to battle some gargantuan show-off 10 times your height who keeps knocking you on your arse with his tail.
(19) Now that Obama has thrown the dice and joined the fray in Syria, Britain will feel increasing pressure to do more to help.
(20) Both dyed and undyed sutures were consistently better than surgical gut with respect to pliability, strength, ease of passage, ease of tying, fraying, knot security, and overall handling.
Skirmish
Definition:
(v. i.) To fight slightly or in small parties; to engage in a skirmish or skirmishes; to act as skirmishers.
(v. i.) A slight fight in war; a light or desultory combat between detachments from armies, or between detached and small bodies of troops.
(v. i.) A slight contest.
Example Sentences:
(1) This we can see writ large in the prime minister’s skirmishes with Philip Hammond , the only member of government visibly considering the national interest.
(2) Manouras added: We will only know once the coroner has conducted an autopsy, but what I can say is that there were no police or skirmishes at the spot at which he died.
(3) But decades of struggle and skirmishes with neighbours have resulted in a tightly guarded border, and they were soon captured by men in uniform.
(4) On Wembley Way the party atmosphere had been briefly punctuated by a skirmish between rival fans.
(5) Benghazi's special forces, who declared support for Haftar, have skirmished with the militias he is targeting but the general himself has not yet been inside the city.
(6) But the confrontation quickly escalated into a series of skirmishes as the two sides played a deadly cat and mouse game in the centre of the city.
(7) On the face of it, this was little more than a skirmish in a town on Mali's north-east confines.
(8) For the UN negotiators in Qatar, this year's talks are just the skirmishes before the key date of 2015, when a new global agreement must be achieved.
(9) But Panorama's North Korea film, due to be broadcast on Monday, presents a challenge of a different order to the skirmish earlier last week about playing a song on the charts that could be taken as disrespectful to Lady Thatcher.
(10) No, I see it as being the right opportunity at the right time,” says a man desperate to break Wearside’s perennial relegation skirmishes.
(11) That interpretation was then corroborated by Labour MPs, who either hadn’t read the document or saw it as a handy weapon in skirmishes for control of the party’s election message.
(12) 4.08pm: Below the line, baerchen is upbeat : "Having watched England's superstar striker give the ball away umpty-nine times against Man City last night with some of the clumsiest touches seen since my brief skirmish with a girl from Hackenthorpe in 1971, they might as well give the job to Charles Chimp for all the difference it will make.
(13) It is the latest skirmish in the bitter infighting that has befallen Ukip since the election in which the party won 4 million votes but just one parliamentary seat.
(14) While the skirmish between Chris Christie and Paul over terrorism and its prevention via surveillance got a lot of media attention this week , it's more helpful to look at the general trend among potential candidates.
(15) Police fired volleys of tear gas canisters into a crowd of thousands - people in office clothes as well as youths in masks who had fought skirmishes throughout the day - scattering them into side streets and nearby hotels.
(16) When TV cameras start filming skirmishes in the crowd, Trump argues their focus on the protesters is evidence of liberal media bias.
(17) This rapidly escalating skirmish in American culture wars came after the Department of Justice sued North Carolina for a state law that forced people to only use public bathrooms that correspond to the gender listed on their birth certificates.
(18) In Tripoli, fighters from the GNC’s militia force, Libya Dawn , have turned on each other in several nights of skirmishing, even as pro-Tobruk forces battle Libya Dawn for control of the coastal highway west of the city.
(19) Skirmishes have flared outside Iraqi’s second largest city over the last few days with an airstrike on one of its main bridges on Sunday.
(20) It's the first battle cry in the pair's hair-raising physical and mental skirmish and has become something approaching a catchphrase.