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PlainSpell

fretty

adjective

fretty is an adjective meaning “Covered with a lattice-like pattern of diagonally interlaced bendlets and bendlets sinister” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-R-E-T-T-Y, and it appears about once in every 95 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does fretty mean?

adjective

  1. 1

    Covered with a lattice-like pattern of diagonally interlaced bendlets and bendlets sinister.

    The coats of various noble British families were originally fretty, but later 'simplified' to a single fret

  2. 2

    Inclined to fret, agitated, worrying.

  3. 3

    colloquialInflamed, like a sore.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Forms of fretty

  • more fretty comparative
  • most fretty superlative

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is fretty?

Fretty appears about once in every 95 million words in written English, the 313,259th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Fretty in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense covered with a lattice-like pattern:

LanguageWords
Frenchfretté

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does fretty come from?

From fret (“lattice, trellis”) + -y.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).