Other forms: fried, fries, frying
To fry something is to cook it in hot fat in a pan over heat. An egg spitting in butter, onions going soft and gold, a pan of bacon on a Sunday morning.
The oil is the whole point: boil something in water and you have not fried it, and neither has the oven. Deep-frying drops the food right under the oil, stir-frying keeps it moving fast in a wok, and a fry-up is the British plate of bacon, eggs, sausage and beans. In American English, fries are the chips that come with a burger. There is a second fry with no connection to cooking — young fish, just hatched — which survives in small fry, people or things too unimportant to bother with, and in having bigger fish to fry. When a laptop dies in a power surge, you will hear that it got fried.
1verbfryTo cook food in hot fat or oil in a pan.
“Fry the eggs in butter and slide them onto the toast.”
Patternfry + noun (eggs, onions, fish) · fry sth in oil / butter · shallow / deep / stir fry · a frying pan · fried rice
synonyms: sauté, pan-fry
2verbburnTo burn or ruin something with too much heat or electricity.
“One power surge is enough to fry a router.”
3nounyoungYoung fish that have just hatched.
“The pond was thick with fry no longer than a fingernail.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
fry is a way of cooking.
FRY → French FRIes
French fries are the clue: cut the potatoes, drop them in hot oil and fry them until they turn gold.
Fry has cousins a long way from English: Ancient Greek phrygo, to roast or bake, and Sanskrit bhrjj, to roast, grill or fry — the same family behind the fried Indian snacks called bhujia. When it settled in English it pushed out the older native word, hirsten.
Middle English
fryen
English, today
fry
From Middle English fryen. Cognate with Ancient Greek φρύγω (“to roast, bake”), Sanskrit भृज्ज् (“to roast, grill, fry”). Replaced native hirsten, from hierstan. Related to bhurji, bhujia (“fried Indian snacks”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA