(v. t.) To rub; to wear away by friction; to chafe; to gall; hence, to eat away; to gnaw; as, to fret cloth; to fret a piece of gold or other metal; a worm frets the plants of a ship.
(v. t.) To impair; to wear away; to diminish.
(v. t.) To make rough, agitate, or disturb; to cause to ripple; as, to fret the surface of water.
(v. t.) To tease; to irritate; to vex.
(v. i.) To be worn away; to chafe; to fray; as, a wristband frets on the edges.
(v. i.) To eat in; to make way by corrosion.
(v. i.) To be agitated; to be in violent commotion; to rankle; as, rancor frets in the malignant breast.
(v. i.) To be vexed; to be chafed or irritated; to be angry; to utter peevish expressions.
(n.) The agitation of the surface of a fluid by fermentation or other cause; a rippling on the surface of water.
(n.) Agitation of mind marked by complaint and impatience; disturbance of temper; irritation; as, he keeps his mind in a continual fret.
(n.) Herpes; tetter.
(n.) The worn sides of river banks, where ores, or stones containing them, accumulate by being washed down from the hills, and thus indicate to the miners the locality of the veins.
(v. t.) To ornament with raised work; to variegate; to diversify.
(n.) Ornamental work in relief, as carving or embossing. See Fretwork.
(n.) An ornament consisting of smmall fillets or slats intersecting each other or bent at right angles, as in classical designs, or at obilique angles, as often in Oriental art.
(n.) The reticulated headdress or net, made of gold or silver wire, in which ladies in the Middle Ages confined their hair.
(n.) A saltire interlaced with a mascle.
(n.) A short piece of wire, or other material fixed across the finger board of a guitar or a similar instrument, to indicate where the finger is to be placed.
(v. t.) To furnish with frets, as an instrument of music.
Example Sentences:
(1) The FSA was fretting about solvency when liquidity was the problem.
(2) She finds indoor activities to discourage the kids from playing outside on the foulest days, and plans holidays abroad as often as possible – but still frets about what their years in Delhi may do to her children’s health.
(3) It might seem absurd, but she also fretted about the horrendous poll tax bills received by people she knew, people she knew couldn't pay.
(4) And in a broader sense, the sort of Conservatives who think intelligently and strategically – and there are more of them than you think – fret that a bearded 66-year-old socialist has ignited political debate in a way that absolutely nobody in the mainstream predicted.
(5) It certainly saved her fretting over her debut sex scene.
(6) Moyes had already described how he had fretted about his attire when Ferguson initially invited him round to discuss the biggest job in English football and how the colour had drained from his face when he was offered it.
(7) For long periods Argentina had been stifled by a fine counterpunching opposition, but it would be a little hasty to fret too much about them after this performance.
(8) Chipmaker ARM is the biggest faller in London, as analysts fret about a slowdown in royalty revenues.
(9) "I used to be really nervous and sit in my dressing room and fret about a scene," he told Rolling Stone .
(10) Hewitt, playing in probably his last Davis Cup for his country at 34 before retiring from the game at the Australian Open in January, added: “We were able to keep Andy out there for a long time, but he’s still favourite [on Sunday].” For the British team, the Murrays’ win lifted a considerable weight off the shoulders of the captain, Leon Smith, who shared the crowd’s anxiety at several key moments of the match, none more fretful than when Andy Murray failed to serve it out in the fourth set and then when they were unable to convert the first match point in the subsequent tie-break.
(11) While Victorians celebrated the empire on which the sun would never set with successive jubilees (golden, 1887, and diamond, 1897), many readers fretted over foreign (increasingly German) threats to the harmony of English life.
(12) On Tuesday, for every wealthy Kolonaki resident fretting about their cash, there was a less well-off state or company employee convinced it would not come to that.
(13) They fretted as political ambition was given rocket boosters by technology.
(14) But better economic sentiment means more market fretting over the Fed's huge stimulus programme being scaled back.
(15) • Follow the Guardian's World Cup team on Twitter • Sign up to play our daily Fantasy Football game • Stats centre: Get the lowdown on every player • The latest semi-final news, features and more People get fretful.
(16) • Three graphs to stop smartphone fans fretting about market share
(17) After dinner she drove him to the railway station while fretting over leaving her baby son sleeping at home.
(18) Significant differences in the shapes of the cathodic Tafel slopes were also seen with cylinders with different surface conditions, and static versus fretting plates.
(19) Despite their jokey exterior, most had big things on their mind, fretting over marriages and babies, breakups and single life; less "grossout" comedy than "freakout".
(20) City analysts still fret that Bailey has either taken on too much or is an unproven chief executive.
Gnaw
Definition:
(v. t.) To bite, as something hard or tough, which is not readily separated or crushed; to bite off little by little, with effort; to wear or eat away by scraping or continuous biting with the teeth; to nibble at.
(v. t.) To bite in agony or rage.
(v. t.) To corrode; to fret away; to waste.
(v. i.) To use the teeth in biting; to bite with repeated effort, as in eating or removing with the teethsomething hard, unwiedly, or unmanageable.
Example Sentences:
(1) )-induced gnawing behavior in rats was slightly more potent than that of clocapramine.
(2) Gallic wine sales in the UK have been tumbling for the past 20 years, but the news that France, once the largest exporter to these shores, has slipped behind Australia, the United States, Italy and now South Africa will have producers gnawing their knuckles in frustration.
(3) This suggests that the locomotor stimulation induced by amphetamine involves central norepinephrine, while dopamine neurons play an important role in the induced compulsive gnawing behavior.
(4) The gnawing behavior is probably associated with the increase in brain dopamine resulting from this treatment.
(5) And those who preach or teach extremism, those who say we should not respect other Australians, those who seek to gnaw away at that social fabric, are not helping the Australian dream.
(6) The IT administration of THA, nicotine and cytisine was also associated with gnawing, vocalization and hyperactivity and in the case of THA, diarrhoea.
(7) Apomorphine-induced gnawing and licking but not sniffing were attenuated in rats with GP lesions.
(8) In control rats, SKF 38393 enhanced the stereotyped responses induced by quinpirole, converting lower-level stereotypies (sniffing and rearing) to more intense oral behaviors (licking and gnawing).
(9) Previous reports demonstrated that hypothalamic stimulation may elicit either eating, drinking, or gnawing and emphasized both the specificity of the neural circuits mediating these behaviors and the similarity to behavior during natural-drive states such as hunger and thirst.
(10) The thymoleptics imipramine, desipramine, protriptyline, nortriiptyline, chlorimipramine and amitriptyline all potentiate gnawing of mice induced by Dopa following decarboxylase inhibitior Ro 4-4602.
(11) This study was designed to assess whether phencyclidine (PCP) produces dopamine (DA)-dependent behaviors such as licking, gnawing and biting (which are not observed in normal rats) in rats after pretreatments with a tryptophan hydroxylase inhibitor, p-chlorophenylalanine (PCPA) and specific serotonergic neuronal toxin, p-chloroamphetamine (PCA).
(12) In freely moving conditions, electrical brain stimulation (EBS) of this part of the mesencephalon elicited mainly aversive effects (escape reactions: violent running and explosive jumps), but also ipsiversive circling and "gnawing."
(13) In contrast, bilateral intranigral injection of the selective delta agonist D-Pen2,D-Pen5 enkephalin (DPDPE) elicited dose-dependent exploratory behavior and rearing but failed to produce gnawing.
(14) The specific D-2 agonist LY 171555 elicited yawning, genital grooming, exploratory behavior, downward sniffing and licking but failed to induce gnawing even at high doses.
(15) The behavior categories included grooming, yawning, turning, nodding and gnawing, as well as snout contact and nonsnout contact variants of locomoting, rearing and sitting.
(16) The big four supermarket chains are battling over the squeezed middle market which is being gnawed away by Waitrose at the top and the rapidly expanding discounters Aldi and Lidl at the bottom.
(17) In order to test the possibility that the substantia nigra (SN) might be involved, the amount of food intake and gnawing produced by mild tail pinch were assessed following bilateral microinjections of opioid antagonists into the SN.
(18) When B-HT 920 was combined with SKF 38393 following pretreatment with idazoxane, both the intensity and form (continual licking and gnawing) of stereotyped behavior was enhanced.
(19) The effects of clonidine, an indirectly-acting cholinergic antagonist, on 5 behaviors elicited by atropine (locomotion, rearing, sniffing, grooming and gnawing) were studied in rats.
(20) The sensory word descriptors (crushing, sharp, tearing, cutting, penetrating, gnawing, dull, pulling, sore, stinging, pricking and pinching) and the affective word descriptors (dreadful, torturing, killing, unbearable, terrifying, suffocating, exhausting, unhappy, troublesome, annoying, irritating and fearful) are suggested as a foundation upon which a pain assessment tool could be developed for use in clinical practice.