Wordie: Fraught: Comments

Comment by reesetee, about 1 month ago

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 19:33:59 +0000

I'd like to be fraught with chocolate right now.

Comment by rolig, about 1 month ago

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 22:50:40 +0000

Sorry to be late for this interesting conversation. I'm persuaded by JMP, qroqqa, and the OED that "fraught" originally meant "full, laden, etc." in all senses (i.e. "freighted") but that eventually its meaning narrowed, in general usage, to "filled with tension, distress, risk, and so on". Bilby's determination to resuscitate the older, broader meaning is commendable, but I am doubtful of its success. To mean the interesting question is, why did "fraught" narrow its meaning precisely to this noirish content. My guess is not so much that it sounds like "taut" (there is nothing inherently ominous about tautness) but because it seems to align (and perhaps confuse) itself with other dark "fr-" participial words: frayed, afraid, frightened. Folk etymology is a powerful force in the development of meaning.

Comment by dontcry, about 1 month ago

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:17:05 +0000

Do you see the cup as half fraught or half empty?
He's really fraught of himself.
I'm fraught, I can't eat another bite.
You're so fraught of shit your eyes are brown.
I can't take on that project, my plate is fraught.

Comment by johnmperry, about 1 month ago

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 06:26:23 +0000

(I think that quote readsa whole lot better if you insert a mental comma after Thither full

Comment by yarb, about 1 month ago

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 04:47:30 +0000

I'm with qroqqa. It can mean full (these days), but only in a few specific circumstances. People aren't fraught with Greek anymore.

Look at the quotation from PL by brtom a year ago: if this means "full", Satan is "full full" with mischievous revenge (obv. the first full isn't the same as our modern full, but still).

Comment by bilby, about 1 month ago

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 04:06:10 +0000

I think fraught can mean full. Words can mean what you want them to mean: the Alice in Wonderland principle. I'm fraught with joy at the rediscovery of this word. A few hundred years of dormancy is no barrier to effective modern use, in my opinion. Isn't somebody growing wheat with seeds recovered from Pompei?

Comment by Asativum, about 1 month ago

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 03:30:12 +0000

There's glory for you, c_b!

Comment by chained_bear, about 1 month ago

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:20:13 +0000

You know, qroqqa, all respect and everything, but I'm going to say "fraught with beans" and "fraught with hot air" and all sorts of fraughttage misuses from now on. In general I believe strongly that we should all use this word as often as possible. Take back the fraught!

Comment by dontcry, about 1 month ago

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:57:13 +0000

Yes, jmp, but loaded with "Utensils of War" (bad) ...not cookies (good)!

Comment by Darqueau, about 1 month ago

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:31:55 +0000

this isn't the only place where a lot of fraughttage is going on...
see gambol

Comment by johnmperry, about 1 month ago

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:17:14 +0000

And the citation:1671: And Waggons fraught with Utensils of War. to me has a strictly literal meaning - loaded with.

Comment by johnmperry, about 1 month ago

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:06:08 +0000

I wonder what a "full-fraught pincushion" is. How it's both full and fraught, and with what?

"Fraughted" is interesting, because it seems like it should have been fraughtened.

Comment by sionnach, about 1 month ago

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:33:18 +0000

whimper

Comment by qroqqa, about 1 month ago

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:15:23 +0000

'Fraught' overlaps with 'full' in that you can use them in the same narrow context: 'fraught with danger', 'full of danger'. But you can't use it as if it meant just "full"—as in 'full of beans', 'full up to the top', 'full from eating', 'inflate till it's full', etc. etc.

In fact the original sense "laden, full" scarcely seems to have survived till 1700. Here are the latest applicable prose quotations the OED has for various uses. (Poetic uses of course lingered longer.)

1666: Smaller Vessels that lay fraught for the Streights.
1668: The ships are said to be richly fraughted.
1671: And Waggons fraught with Utensils of War.
1755: Liberty, fraught with blessings as it is, when unabused, has, perhaps, been abused to our destruction.
1786: The little princess had excited her curiosity by the full-fraught pincushion.
1798: From these retreats, he often returned fraughted with light.
1803: He returned to Oxford full fraught with Greek.

The original sense was last used literally in 1668—the absurd claim that it still means this is three hundred and forty years out of date!

Comment by sionnach, about 1 month ago

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:07:43 +0000

Well, who doesn't enjoy a bit of early-morning fraughttage to start the day?

If my earlier question came across as snarky, my apologies. Didn't mean it that way. And I think I understand what qroqqa is saying when it is used absolutely. But I seem to come across it more often in the "fraught with X" kind of usage, where X is something like danger/difficulty/tension/complexity. Which I interpret as being essentially the same as "full of X".

Comment by chained_bear, about 1 month ago

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:04:27 +0000

I think it's generally used in that way, but only through some trick of archaic grammar. "Marked by distress" is just the most perfect definition of it. Thanks, WeirdNET!

ptero... will you please add that so I can shamelessly rip it off? Thanks.

Comment by pterodactyl, about 1 month ago

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:50:30 +0000

Yeah, chained_bear -- there's a whole lot of fraughttage going on.

Comment by dontcry, about 1 month ago

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:38:22 +0000

I've always thought fraught meant "full" or "filled with" -- but never with anything "good."

Comment by chained_bear, about 1 month ago

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:28:41 +0000

I think this page is pretty fraught.

Comment by sionnach, about 1 month ago

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:23:19 +0000

I'm pretty certain it doesn't and can't mean "full"

Sorry, qroqqa, I don't understand your reasoning here at all. Why not? And if not that, then what does it mean? You don't really address that.

I have to say that jmp's comments seem to make far more sense than yours here. But then, I confess to a certain MEGO* reaction to jargon like "prepositional phrase complement".

*: 'my eyes glaze over'.

But maybe I'm missing something.

Comment by johnmperry, about 1 month ago

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:14:23 +0000

Etymology suggest two different sources:
Middle English 'fraughten'
Middle Dutch 'vrachten'

Comment by johnmperry, about 1 month ago

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:13:13 +0000

How can "fraught with danger" not mean "filled with danger".

"Common and standard" doesn't mean "correct". But where/when does incorrect become correct? I often hear people on tv saying "between you and I" but that can't ever be correct, however common it is.

Comment by qroqqa, about 1 month ago

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:03:12 +0000

I'm pretty certain it doesn't and can't mean "full", which seems to be a completely obsolete sense. The OED doesn't give any post-1800 prose citations for that sense. From then on, it's always 'fraught with danger', 'fraught with difficulty', etc.— the modern senses when used with 'with' (i.e. with a prepositional phrase complement). Checking Google and the British National Corpus confirms this.

Used absolutely (i.e. without a PP complement), it seems to always have the ordinary modern sense "tense, difficult, distressing". This is a recent sense—the unrevised OED (2nd. ed.) only has quotations back to 1966—but it's clearly a very common and standard meaning. BNC quotations include:

The whole fraught episode must signify something.

And then the fraught silence would modulate into conciliatory monosyllable, and back to their peaceful co-existence.

Out of this fraught legal and financial tangle the bureau worker must work with the client to create order and stability.

Obviously as you get a little bit closer to it it gets rather more fraught.

—So this is what the word actually means.

Comment by johnmperry, about 1 month ago

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:34:02 +0000

frequently misused, because it sounds like 'taut'. Actually means "full". If adjectives could be classified as transitive and intransitive, then this would be intransitive, in that it needs to be followed by a preposition (with).

Middle English, past participle of obsolete verb fraughten, to load. Cf freight

Comment by brtom, about 1 year ago

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 12:46:45 +0000

Thither full fraught with mischievous revenge,
Accurst, and in a cursed hour he hies.
Milton, Paradise Lost II