FRETTED

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does fretted mean? 

• FRETTED (adjective)
  The adjective FRETTED has 2 senses:

1. having frets

2. having a pattern of fretwork or latticework

  Familiarity information: FRETTED used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• FRETTED (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Having frets

Classified under:

Relational adjectives (pertainyms)

Domain category:

music (an artistic form of auditory communication incorporating instrumental or vocal tones in a structured and continuous manner)

Antonym:

unfretted (without frets)

Pertainym:

fret (a small bar of metal across the fingerboard of a musical instrument; when the string is stopped by a finger at the metal bar it will produce a note of the desired pitch)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Having a pattern of fretwork or latticework

Synonyms:

fretted; interlaced; latticed; latticelike

Similar:

reticular; reticulate (resembling or forming a network)

 Context examples 

She was sure it was very ill—it cried, and fretted, and was all over pimples.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

She has been in love with him ever since they first met, and while my father's consent was uncertain, she fretted herself almost into a fever.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

I tell you, lad, that I am all undone, like a fretted bow-string.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

His first betrothed heard of this, and fretted so much about his faithfulness that she nearly died.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

He fretted, pished, and pshawed.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

There is some fascination, surely, when I am moved by the mere presence of such an one, even lying as she lay in a tomb fretted with age and heavy with the dust of centuries, though there be that horrid odour such as the lairs of the Count have had.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Having spread the quilt and folded my night-dress, I went to the window-seat to put in order some picture-books and doll's house furniture scattered there; an abrupt command from Georgiana to let her playthings alone (for the tiny chairs and mirrors, the fairy plates and cups, were her property) stopped my proceedings; and then, for lack of other occupation, I fell to breathing on the frost-flowers with which the window was fretted, and thus clearing a space in the glass through which I might look out on the grounds, where all was still and petrified under the influence of a hard frost.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)