(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.
Unravel
Definition:
(v. t.) To disentangle; to disengage or separate the threads of; as, to unravel a stocking.
(v. t.) Hence, to clear from complication or difficulty; to unfold; to solve; as, to unravel a plot.
(v. t.) To separate the connected or united parts of; to throw into disorder; to confuse.
(v. i.) To become unraveled, in any sense.
Example Sentences:
(1) However, as the plan unravels, Professor Marcus's team turn on one another, with painfully (if painfully funny) results.
(2) Her black persona unravelled this week when Ruthanne and Larry Dolezal, a couple named on her Montana birth certificate as her biological parents, told Spokane’s KREM 2 News that her ancestry was German and Czech, with traces of Native American.
(3) Putting all this information together we can begin to unravel the problem of how the Listeria forms the cytoskeleton and what is the biological purpose of this tail.
(4) Thus, 14.7K appears to be a general inhibitor of TNF cytolysis, and as such should be an important tool in unraveling the mechanism of TNF cytolysis.
(5) This communication reviews the almost 40 years of studies by Jack Metcoff, MD, and coworkers to unravel the causes of fetal malnutrition and their efforts to prevent it.
(6) Because the housing crisis goes far beyond us Focus E15 mums | Jasmin Stone Read more Annette May, 68, from Lambeth Annette May has watched with mounting dismay as the community fabric of the council estate where she has lived for 44 years steadily unravels.
(7) Substantial progress has been made in unraveling the organization of the circadian system of Aplysia californica.
(8) The free ends of the microtubules appear unraveled; they are seen first as single elements, then as doublets, and finally are arranged into a cylinder.
(9) Unraveled filaments reconstituted from NF-L plus either NF-M or NF-H indicated that NF-M and NF-H are incorporated evenly into each protofibril.
(10) Athens was unravelling into chaos, unable to form a government and forced into fresh elections , plunging the markets into freefall as Europe's leaders abandoned any pretence that a Greek exit from the euro might not be imminent.
(11) The chancellor leaves the Treasury trying to hide the cost of his mistakes while his reputation for economic competence continues to unravel."
(12) With the eurozone unravelling and world markets in turmoil, threatening even the meagre recovery the UK economy had achieved since the onset of the credit crunch, he repeatedly evokes a mood of national emergency to explain why the coalition he forged with David Cameron is the right government for the times.
(13) Without a rescue, president Nicos Anastasiades said Cyprus would default and threaten to unravel investor confidence in the eurozone.
(14) This section was memorably captured by the computer and security expert Caspar Bowden , who wrote: "Interpreting that section requires the unravelling of a triple-nested inversion of meanings across six cross-referenced subsections, linked to a dozen other cross-linked definitions, which are all dependent on a highly ambiguous 'notwithstanding'."
(15) If the statistics aren't right the whole story, beautiful as it is, unravels," he said.
(16) But sometimes a smile is not enough.” As the latest proposed deal to avoid Greece’s bankruptcy threatens to unravel , a row is raging on Rhodes and several other Greek islands over fears that they are being unfairly targeted.
(17) George Osborne’s claim that the government secured a major corporation tax deal with Google appear to be unravelling after it emerged that a quarter of the £130m recovered by HM Revenue & Customs related to the US company’s share options scheme.
(18) I have lived in Greece my whole life and experienced the economic crisis as it unraveled the past years.
(19) As the field of human genetics successfully continues to unravel the secrets of an individual's genetic makeup, the social processes of stigmatization and ostracism of those with "undesirable" traits have the potential to increase.
(20) There's got to be a deal here between the taxpayer and the scheme member and that deal is going to unravel if the people in the public sector say they will not contemplate change."