Other forms: frets, fretted, fretting
To fret is to worry continually over small things. Fret about it, do not fret, fretting over nothing.
It suggests persistent low-level anxiety rather than acute fear. Do not fret is a reassurance. There is a separate noun fret meaning the metal bar on a guitar neck, which is what makes the notes exact — fretless instruments leave it to the player. And in northern England a sea fret is a cold coastal mist. Note fretful, which is used mostly of babies; and fretwork, which is decorative cut woodwork.
1verbfretTo worry continually over small things.
“She fretted all evening about whether she had locked the back door.”
2nounmetalA metal bar on a guitar neck.
“There are about twenty frets and nine of them get used.”
fret is a worrying, or a guitar bar.
Old English fretan meant to devour — the same root as the German fressen, to eat as an animal does. Worry was understood as something eating at you, which is exactly the modern metaphor.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₁ed-
Proto-Germanic
*fraetaną — to consume, devour, eat up
Proto-West Germanic
*fraetan
Old English
fretan — to eat up, devour; to fret; to break, burst
Middle English
frēten — to eat (at), corrode, destroy, annoy
English, today
fret
Built from
From Middle English frēten (“to eat (at), corrode, destroy, annoy”), from Old English fretan (“to eat up, devour; to fret; to break, burst”), from Proto-West Germanic fraetan, from Proto-Germanic fraetaną (“to consume, devour, eat up”), from Proto-Germanic fra- (“for-, prefix meaning ‘completely, fully’”) (from Proto-Indo-European pro- (“forward, toward”)) + etaną (“to eat”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European h₁ed- (“to eat”)). The senses meaning “to chafe, rub” could also be due to sound-association with Anglo-Norman freiter (modern dialectal French fretter), from Vulgar Latin frictāre, frequentative of Latin fricāre, from fricō (“to chafe, rub”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European bʰreyH- (“to cut”); compare Old French froter (modern French frotter). The chief difficulty is the lack of evidence of the Old French word. 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA