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Fretwork. See Fret.

One who, or that which, foreshows, or foretells. Yon gray lines That fret the clouds are messengers of day. Shak.

Hence: Out of humor; peevish; angry; fretful; also, abstracted and pensive; sad; gloomy; melancholy. "Every peevish, moody malcontent." Rowe. Arouse thee from thy moody dream! Sir W. Scott.

To tease in a petty way; to scold habitually; to annoy; to fret pertinaciously. [Colloq.] "She never nagged." J. Ingelow.

To fret or sting; to irritate or vex; to cause to experience sensations of displeasure or uneasiness not amounting to violent anger. The princes were so nettled at the scandal of this affront, that every man took it to himself. L'Estrange.

To fret and snarl about trifles. [Prov. Eng.]

The act of obscuring, or the state of being obscured; obscuration. Pomfret.

opinion; to think conceitedly; to presume. They that overween, And at thy growing virtues fret their spleen. Milton.

a constellation. Shak. [/Make] each particular hair to stand an end, Like quills upon the fretful porpentine. Shak. Seken in every halk and every herne Particular sciences for to lerne. Chaucer.

Undergoing pains, trails, or the like, without murmuring or fretfulness; bearing up with equanimity against trouble; long- suffering.

Habitually fretful; easily vexed or fretted; hard to please; apt to complain; querulous; petulant. "Her peevish babe." Wordsworth. She is peevish, sullen, froward. Shak.

A slight fit of peevishness or fretfulness. "In a pet she started up." Tennyson.

Fretful; peevish; moody; capricious; inclined to ill temper. "A pettish kind of humor." Sterne. -- Pet"tish*ly, adv. -- Pet"tish*ness, n.

Capriciously fretful; characterized by ill-natured freakishness; irritable. "Petulant moods." Macaulay.

Fretful excitement. [Obs. or Local] See Feaze, n.

To wound the pride of; to sting; to nettle; to irritate; to fret; to offend; to excite to anger. Pique her, and soothe in turn. Byron.

Broken out, or marked, with smallpox; pock-fretten.

Expressing complaint; fretful; whining; as, a querulous tone of voice.

ments or panels from one another, or doubled, turned, and interlaced so as to form knots, frets, or other ornaments. See Illust. (12) of Column.

To become fretted or dimpled on the surface, as water when agitated or running over a rough bottom; to be covered with small waves or undulations, as a field of grain.