1 if fabric frays or sth frays it, the threads in it start to come apart:
[V] The cuffs of his shirt were fraying. * This material frays easily. * [VN] It was fashionable to fray the bottoms of your jeans.
2 if sb's nerves or temper frays or sth frays them, the person starts to get irritated or annoyed:
[V] As the debate went on, tempers began to fray. [also VN]
frayed adjective:
frayed denim shorts * Tempers were getting very frayed.
IDIOMS
fray at / around the edges / seams to start to come apart or to fail:
Support for the leader was fraying at the edges.
noun (the fray) [sing.] a fight, competition or argument, especially one that is exciting or seen as a test of your ability:
ready / eager for the fray * to enter / join the fray * At 71, he has now retired from the political fray.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for fray is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is fray a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, fray is tagged as verb.
Does fray appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — fray appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
