fritinancyt (fritinansi)

[Irreg. The sacred and ceremonious feasts which we observe in memorial of our birth-days, and nativitie, standeth much upon furmentie, gruell, fritters , and pancakes. Holland, tr. of Pliny, xviii. 8. 2. A fragment; a shred; a small piece. Seese and putter? have I lived to stand at the taunts of one that makes fritters of English? Shak., M. W. of W., v. 5. And cut whole giants into fritters , S. Butler, Hudibras. 3. pl . Specifically, in whale - fishery , tendinous fibers of the whale's blubber, running in various directions, and connecting the cellular substance which contains the oil. They are what remains after the oil has been tried out, and are used as fuel to try out the next whale. Hamersly. fritter (frit'er), v. t. [ What pretty things imagination Will fritter out in adulation! Lloyd , Poetry Profe ors. 2. To break into small pieces or fragments; wear away, as by friction; lose in small pieces or parts. Break all their nerves, and fritter all their sense. Pope , Dunciad, iv. 56. A gaudy silken robe, striped and intersected with unfriendly tints, that fritter the ma es of light, and distract the vision. Goldsmith, Taste. Nothing is suffered to prevail upon its own principle; the whole is so frittered down and disjointed that scarcely a trace of the original remains. Burke, Economical Reform. Undistinguish'd trifles swell the scene, The last new play and fritter'd magazine. and with L. port us, a harbor: see ford and port1.] 1. A narrow arm of the sea; an estuary; the opening of a river into the sea: used specifically in Scotland only, where firth is the commoner form: as, the Firth of Forth; the Frith of Clyde. IMG:content-1873.png:[blocks in formation] What desp'rate madman then would venture o'er The frith , or haul his cables from the shore? Dryden, tr. of Virgil's Georgics, i. The friths that branch and spread Their sleeping silver thro' the hills. Tennyson, In Memoriam, Conclusion. 2. A kind of weir for catching fish; a kind of net. frithborg (frith'bôrg), n. [AS. * frith - borh, * frith - borg, found only as used or quoted in the so-called Laws of Edward the Confe or (in Latin), namely, frithborg, frith - borch, acc. pl. frith bor gas, and Latinized (nom.) frithborgus, where the editions of Lambard and Wilkins give (acc. pl.) freoborges, Latinized (nom.) fri borgus; hence the form friborga in Fleta, and friborg, friburgh, freeborg in later writers. The proper AS. form is * frithborh, E. borrow1, n.). Cf. frithsoken and frank - pledge.] In Anglo - Saxon law, one of the tithings or groups of ten men into which the hundred was divided, the members of each one being held liable for the misdeeds of a fellow-member. As touching the king's peace, every hundred was divided into many freeborgs or tithings consisting of ten men, which stood all bound one for the other, and did amongst themselves punish small matters in their court for that purpose called the lete. Spelman , Anc. Government of England. But the name [of tithing] has been very commonly applied both by historical writers and in legal custom to denote. the a ociation of ten men in common responsibility legally embodied in the frithborh or frankpledge. Stubbs , Const. Hist., § 41. [AS. frithgild , Anglo - Saxon law ,