At our recent appearance in Dallas, Texas, a listener asked about the use of fret as a transitive verb, as in “Don’t fret that child.” This usage is particularly common in the American South, and comes from the old notion of fret meaning to eat. The listener brought her infant daughter Dayspring to the event, dayspring being an archaic word for dawn. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “To Fret Someone”
We had such a great time recently in Dallas.
I know, right?
They were fantastic.
That’s our third time there.
And there were endless questions.
We could have done Q&A for another couple hours.
I know.
They pretty much turned off the lights to get us to go out of there.
But you remember that one couple who was there?
They were sitting in the back, and they had their four-month-old baby with them.
Oh, yeah, a little cutie.
Yeah, and she was perfectly behaved through the whole thing.
But they asked about fret.
The couple was David and Angela Heat-Dierks, and she’s originally from North Carolina,
Where they use fret as a transitive verb.
Remember that?
She was asking about—
Yeah, so her question was, can you say, is it all right to say, don’t fret him, like don’t fret your brother?
Right, exactly.
And it turns out that, yes, in parts of the country, particularly the South, you can use fret as a transitive verb.
And I couldn’t think of what the etymology would be, but it goes back to an old word that means to eat.
Like, you know, a dog will worry a bone, meaning gnaw on it.
And like eating on something is like gnawing at it.
So that’s where we get the idea of fretting over something.
You’re sort of gnawing at something.
But you can use it as a transitive verb as well.
Oh, that’s interesting.
Yeah, so that’s counter to most people who speak other varieties of English, right?
Right, right.
But in the South, you might say, don’t fret the child, but let him alone.
Or it ain’t fretting me, something like that.
Well, that is perfect.
Isn’t that cool?
Yeah.
One other thing to say about that, that beautiful little four-month-old baby is named Dayspring.
Oh, nice.
Isn’t that gorgeous?
Dayspring, that’s cute.
I did not know until I learned it from them and looked it up.
That is a term in the Bible that means dawn.
It’s a translation of Greek that means dawn.
Almost like a kenning, right?
Yeah.
Almost an Anglo-Saxon combination of words to make a compound.
Right, right.
Like the spring from which dawn comes.
Lovely.
Yeah.
By the way, we do live events all around the country,
And you can find the latest dates and tour stops that we’re making.
And ask us to come to your town on our website at waywordradio.org.
