Frazzled means frayed and worn out by too much at once. Feel frazzled, a frazzled parent, completely frazzled.
It is informal and sympathetic, and it names the state of being stretched rather than simply tired — a frazzled person is coping badly with too many demands. The image is cloth frayed at the edge. Note frazzle, which is probably a blend of fray and fazzle, an old dialect word for tangling.
1adjectivefrazzledFrayed and worn out by too much at once.
“By the end of the day, the frazzled teacher had lost her voice and her patience.”
synonyms: harried, worn out
frazzled is a state of exhaustion.
Proto-Germanic
*fasōn
Proto-West Germanic
*fas
Old English
fæs — fringe, border
Middle English
facelyn — [of the end of a rope, or of cloth] to unravel
English
frazzle
English, today
frazzled
Built from
frazzle Originally an East Anglian word. Either from a variant of the now obsolete fazle (“to unravel”), altered due to influence from fray#Etymology_1, or from a blend of fazle and fray. fazle comes from earlier fasel, which was inherited from Middle English facelyn (“[of the end of a rope, or of cloth] to unravel”). facelyn was a verbal derivative of the noun fasylle (“frayed edge”), which was in turn a derivative (with the diminutive suffix -el) of Old English fæs (“fringe, border”), from Proto-West Germanic fas, from Proto-Germanic fasōn. Related to German Faser (“fibre”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA