[f. FRET v.1 + -Y1.] Inclined to fret. a. Of persons: Fretful; irritable. b. Of a sore: Inflamed, festering.
1844. Dickens, Lett. to Forster, in Forster, Life (1873), II. 110. O’Connell’s speeches are the old thing: fretty, boastful, frothy, waspish at the voices in the crowd, and all that: but with no true greatness.
1890. Life’s Remorse, II. xiii. 163. I have been rather fretty about it.
1894. Catholic News, 16 June. The book is a literary running sore, fretty, stenchsome and repulsive.
1895. R. Kipling, in Pall Mall G., 26 June, 2/1. It is a curious thing that if you call his name aloud in public after an Englishman you make him hot and fretty.
