Also 8 fretter. [f. prec.]

1

  1.  trans. To break or tear into pieces or fragments; to subdivide minutely. Now rare.

2

1772–84.  Cook, Voy. (1790), IV. 1243. Our sufferings nearly kept pace with our apprehensions, having our main-top-gallant yard carried away in the slings, and the sail frittered in a thousand pieces; the jib and middle stay-sails torn clear off, and the ship so strained, as to make all hands to the pump necessary.

3

1780.  Burke, Sp. Œcon. Reform, Wks. III. 285. Frittering and crumbling down the attention by a blind unsystematick observance of every trifle.

4

1784.  J. Barry, in Lect. Paint., i. (1848), 83. The no less mischievous fragments into which they [northern hordes] were frittered.

5

1803.  T. Jefferson, Writ. (1830), III. 508. They have been still more disfigured by the corruptions of schismatizing followers, who have found an interest in sophisticating and perverting the simple doctrines he taught, by engrafting on them the mysticisms of a Grecian sophist, frittering them into subtleties, and obscuring them with jargon, until they have caused good men to reject the whole in disgust, and to view Jesus himself as an impostor.

6

1806–7.  J. Beresford, Miseries Hum. Life (1826), XX. ix. 268. Nine sets of teeth employed alternately on the same hazle-nut before it can be cracked—the kernel to be afterwards frittered among the parties cracking.

7

1816.  Keatinge, Trav. (1817), II. 236. France was once frittered into subdivisions, as Spain still is, and distracted by local interest and contending politics; but the lustre of the reign of Louis XIV. gave a nationality to the public mind, enabling it to bear all misfortune, and ultimately constituing one great bond of public sentiment.

8

1822–34.  Good’s Study Med. (ed. 4), I. 359. When they [i.e. hydatids] die, the bags and cysts are often broken up and become frittered into minute tatters and filaments.

9

1866.  Alger, The Solitudes of Nature and of Man, IV. 366. That throng of women whose attention is frittered on trifles.

10

  b.  intr. for refl. † To become broken into pieces or subdivided (obs.). rarely, To dwindle.

11

1796.  Kirwan, Elem. Min. (ed. 2), I. 79. In the lump it cannot be broken but by a hammer, but small pieces of it fritter between the fingers.

12

a. 1828.  H. Neele, Lit. Rem. (1829), 18. The canvass fritters into shreds and the column moulders into ruin.

13

1876.  J. Parker, Paracl., II. Epil. 374. Nowhere is there any attempt to satisfy mere curiosity: minuteness never fritters into pettiness, nor is the lowest condescension ever less than the attempering of infinite glory.

14

  2.  a. With away, down: To do away with piecemeal; to attenuate, wear down, whittle away; to spend (energy, time) on trifles, to waste.

15

1728.  Pope, The Dunciad, I. 232.

        How prologues into prefaces decay,
And these to Notes are fritter’d quite away.

16

1777.  Burke, Lett. to Mrq. Rockingham, Wks. IX. 170. To break the continuity of your conduct, and thereby to weaken and fritter away the impression of it.

17

1799.  Han. More, Fem. Educ. (ed. 4), I. 73. They had refined elegance into inspidity, frittered down delicacy into frivolousness, and reduced manner into minauderie.

18

1803.  Wellington, Lett. to Close, in Gurw., Desp., II. 88. To fritter away the small force which his Highness has produced.

19

1820.  Ld. Dudley, Lett., 26 Sept. (1840), 266. Our unpunctuality for instance, which fritters away so large a part of the English day in wearisome waiting and uncertainty.

20

1846.  McCulloch, Acc. Brit. Empire (1854), I. 537. The whole country would be frittered down into potato gardens.

21

1846.  Thackeray, Crit. Rev., Wks. 1886, XXIII. 96. He frittered away in fugitive publications time and genius.

22

1868.  Miss Braddon, Run to Earth, III. vi. 87. You know what Sheridan said about frittering away his money in paying his debts.

23

  † b.  With out. To bring out, utter piecemeal.

24

a. 1764.  Lloyd, Poetry Professors, 42. What pretty things imagination Will fritter out in adulation.

25

  Hence Frittered ppl. a., Frittering vbl. sb. and ppl. a.

26

1778.  Boswell, in Johnson (1791), II. 216. He could put together only curt frittered fragments of his own.

27

1795.  Mason, Ch. Mus., ii. 136. The frittering of one syllable into almost half a century of semiquavers, is perhaps the best and only expedient for shewing its executive powers.

28

1803.  Repton, Landscape Gard. (1805), 47. If too many trees be introduced … the effect becomes fritter’d.

29

1816.  J. Scott, Vis. Paris (ed. 5), 77. A broken mass of small windows, unequal stories, frittered compartments, petty pilasters, and all that may be termed the freaks and nick-nacks of architecture.

30

1853.  Robertson, Serm., Ser. II. 337. A foolish, frivolous, disgraceful, frittered past.

31

1889.  Spectator, 9 Nov. This frittering away of feeling on the scenes of an opera.

32