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To fret and wear away by friction; to hurt or break the skin of by rubbing; to chafe; to injure the surface of by attrition; as, a saddle galls the back of a horse; to gall a mast or a cable. I am loth to gall a new-healed wound. Shak.

n American herring (Dorosoma cepedianum) resembling the shad, but of little value. -- To fret the gizzard, to harass; to vex one's self; to worry. [Low] Hudibras. -- To stick in one's gizzard, to be difficult of digestion; to be offensive. [Low]

To corrode; to fret away; to waste.

To fret; to irritate; to offend. News, my good lord Rome . . . grates me. Shak.

An ornament supposed to be of Greek origin, esp. a fret or meander,

ite or stiffen by gum or a gumlike substance; to make sticky with a gumlike substance. He frets likke a gummed velvet.Shak.

to tire with repeated and exhausting efforts; esp., to weary by importunity, teasing, or fretting; to cause to endure excessive burdens or anxieties; -- sometimes followed by out. [Troops] harassed with a long and wearisome march. Bacon. Nature oppressed and harass'd out with care. Addison. Vext with lawyers and haras…

Of bad temper; morose; crabbed; sour; peevish; fretful; quarrelsome.

delay; eagerness for change, or for something expected; restlessness; chafing of spirit; fretfulness; passion; as, the impatience of a child or an invalid. I then, . . . Out of my grief and my impatience, Answered neglectingly. Shak. With huge impatience he inly swelt More for great sorrow that he could not pass, Than…

Not patient; not bearing with composure; intolerant; uneasy; fretful; restless, because of pain, delay, or opposition; eager for change, or for something expected; hasty; passionate; -- often followed by at, for, of, and under. A violent, sudden, and impatient necessity. Jer. Taylor. Fame, impatient of extremes, decays…

tting of no expiation, atonement, or satisfaction; as, an inexpiable crime or offense. Pomfret.

pose by secret artifice; conspiracy; stratagem. Busy meddlers with intrigues of state. Pomfret.

The state or quality of being irritable; quick excitability; petulance; fretfulness; as, irritability of temper.

To make morbidly excitable, or oversensitive; to fret; as, the skin is irritated by friction; to irritate a wound by a coarse bandage.

To wind old rope around, as a cable, to preserve its surface from being fretted, or to wind iron chains around, to defend from the friction of a rocky bottom, or from the ice. Totten.

other loaf in baking. Lamb. A massy fragment from the rich kissingcrust that hangs like a fretted cornice from the upper half of the loaf. W. Howitt.

. . . prayed him his voyage for to let Chaucer. Yet neither spins nor cards, ne cares nor frets, But to her mother Nature all her care she lets. Spenser. Let me alone in choosing of my wife. Chaucer.

ribs or "sides," arranged like the divisions of a melon, the neck, which has nine or ten frets or divisions, and the head, or cross, in which the screws for tuning are inserted. The strings are struck with the right hand, and with the left the stops are pressed.

Worn; fretted; as, a magged brace. Ham. Nav. Encyc.

tle twisted, used for winding around ropes and cables, to prevent their being weakened by fretting. Marline spike, Marling spike (Naut.), an iron tool tapering to a point, used to separate the strands of a rope in splicing and in marling. It has an eye in the thick end to which a lanyard is attached. See Fid. [Written…