[f. FRET v.2 + -ED1.]
1. Adorned with carving in elaborate patterns; carved or wrought into decorative patterns.
1552. Huloet, s.v. Beame, Beame of a rouffe, not beynge inbowed or fretted.
1667. Pepys, Diary, 3 May. The Duke of York’s chamber … is now fretted at the top.
1711. Pope, Temp. Fame, 137.
| The temple shakes, the sounding gates unfold, | |
| Wide vaults appear, and roofs of fretted gold. |
1750. Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard, 37.
| Forgive, ye Proud, th’ involuntary Fault, | |
| If Memory to these no Trophies raise, | |
| Where thro’ the long-drawn Isle and fretted Vault | |
| The pealing Anthem swells the Note of Praise. |
1813. Byron, Br. Abydos, II. v.
| And round her lamp of fretted gold | |
| Bloom flowers in urns of China’s mould. |
1872. Ruskin, Eagle’s Nest, § 92. Almost as nothing, compared to the joy I used to have, when I knew no better, in the fretted pinnacles of Rouen.
b. transf. and fig. in various senses.
c. 1420. Pallad. on Husb., IV. 724.
| His necke in many a ruge | |
| Yfretted grete. |
1784. Cowper, Task, V. 118.
| There imboss’d and fretted wild | |
| The growing wonder takes a thousand shapes | |
| Capricious. |
1809. Pinkney, Travels through the South of France, 205. Night after night have I laid in my bed, and watched the course of the moon ascending in the fretted vault.
1856. Capern, Poems (ed. 2), 11.
| The antler’d oak, the fretted thorn, | |
| Thee to their nooks are wooing; | |
| Whilst songs are on the breezes borne, | |
| And turtle-doves are cooing. |
1860. Tyndall, Glac., I. xi. 78. It [the slope] was most dangerously steep, and, its termination being the fretted coping of the precipice to which I have referred, if we slid downwards we should shoot over this and be dashed to pieces upon the ice below.
2. Her. Interlaced. Cf. FRETTY a.1
1586. J. Ferne, The Blazon of Gentrie, 177. Burley beareth palee of 6. parts A and B, fretted with a barrulet in fesse G, chiefe and baste of the same.
1610. Guillim, Heraldry, IV. iii. 195. The Field is Pearle, a Purse open, the long strings thereof pendant, Fretted, Nowed, Buttoned, and Tasselled.
