fress
See also: frëss
English
editEtymology
editFrom German fressen (“to eat, devour, gobble”) and/or Yiddish פֿרעסן (fresn), both from Middle High German vrezzen, from Old High German frezzan (“to eat up”), from Proto-West Germanic *fraetan, from Proto-Germanic *fraetaną (“to eat up”), from *fra- (intensive and perfective prefix) + *etaną (“to eat”), equivalent to for- + eat. Cognate with Old English fretan (“to devour”). Doublet of fret.
Pronunciation
editVerb
editfress (third-person singular simple present fresses, present participle fressing, simple past and past participle fressed)
- (obsolete outside dialects, e.g. Lunenburg, Nova Scotia) to eat without restraint; eat heartily
- Synonym: pig out
Further reading
edit- Lewis Poteet (2004) “along the South Shore, especially in the Shelburne area[:] fress—eat”, in South Shore Phrase Book, iUniverse, →ISBN
- Bill Casselman (1995) Casselman's Canadian Words: A Comic Browse Through Words and Folk Sayings Invented by Canadians: “FRESS To eat like an animal is to fress, a verb common in the area around Lunenburg , Nova Scotia. German immigrants introduced this word, from the German fressen 'to devour, to be gluttonous.' Originally the verb was an intensive form […]”
- 2012, H.L. Mencken, American Language Supplement 2, Knopf, →ISBN:
- The dialect of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, which was settled by Germans in the Eighteenth Century, has been studied […] apple-snits (Ger. schnitte); lapish, insipid (Ger. láppisch); klotsy, heavy or soggy (Ger. klotzig); to fress, to eat greedily; […] shimmel, a very blond person (Ger. schimmel, a white mould), and Fassnakday, Shroove Tuesday (Ger. Fastnacht).
Anagrams
editGerman
editVerb
editfress
- (colloquial) first-person singular present of fressen
- Synonym: (standard) fresse
- (colloquial) singular imperative of fressen
- Synonym: (standard) friss
Icelandic
editPronunciation
editNoun
editfress n (genitive singular fress, nominative plural fress) or fress m (genitive singular fress, nominative plural fressar)
Declension
editdeclension of fress
or
Categories:
- English terms borrowed from German
- English terms derived from German
- English terms borrowed from Yiddish
- English terms derived from Yiddish
- English terms derived from Middle High German
- English terms derived from Old High German
- English terms derived from Proto-West Germanic
- English terms derived from Proto-Germanic
- English terms prefixed with for-
- English doublets
- English 1-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English lemmas
- English verbs
- English terms with obsolete senses
- English dialectal terms
- English terms with quotations
- Nova Scotia English
- German non-lemma forms
- German verb forms
- German colloquialisms
- Icelandic 1-syllable words
- Icelandic terms with IPA pronunciation
- Rhymes:Icelandic/ɛsː
- Rhymes:Icelandic/ɛsː/1 syllable
- Icelandic lemmas
- Icelandic nouns
- Icelandic neuter nouns
- Icelandic countable nouns
- Icelandic masculine nouns