Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Ornamental work consisting of three-dimensional frets; geometric openwork.
- n. Such ornamental work represented two dimensionally by chiaroscuro.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Ornamental work consisting of a series or combination of frets; ornamental work with interlacing parts; especially, work in which the design is formed by perforation.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Work adorned with frets; ornamental openwork or work in relief, esp. when elaborate and minute in its parts. Hence, any minute play of light and shade, dark and light, or the like.
WordNet 3.0
- n. framework consisting of an ornamental design made of strips of wood or metal
Examples
“The walls apparently were hewn from black rock, and at regular intervals, placed some three feet from these gleaming walls, uprose slender golden pillars supporting a kind of fretwork arch which entirely masked the ceiling.”
“His metrical movements are full of the same joy in "fretwork" effects -- verse-rhythm and sense-rhythm constantly crossing where the reader expects them to coincide. [”
“But the Smithsonian quickly realized that there are downsides to owning a fragile, 100-year-old wooden structure dripping with ornamental fretwork.”
The Washington Post: After some haggling, a piece of American history heads back home
“Brand New, DaisyFive kids from Long Island have a many appropriate Modest Mouse manuscript since The Lonesome Crowded West, a sawing, slurring, snarling thing, full of sufficient rootless fretwork as good as perplexed melodies to give Isaac Brock pause.”
The Best Albums Of 2009, In Bigger Than The Sound | Industry Fokery
“You contemplate the fretwork of your hand—the thin genetic thread that divides you from your simian predecessors, from the lone gunman on a turreted roof.”
“Though he is embraced as a guitar hero by fans of experimental fretwork, Mr. Sharp also records traditional blues (with the band Terraplane), writes for chamber groups and brassy big bands (Orchestra Carbon), throws in with electronic ensembles (such as the collaborative Bootstrappers), leads a 13-member guitar army (the All-Guitar SyndaKit) and joins creative sidekicks in hybrid projects that employ music, text and images.”
The Wall Street Journal: The 'East Village Nosferatu' Haunts Brooklyn
“Or is it like lacy fretwork - tracery bracket & buzz saw”
“In Xizhou, the Lindens worked with party officials to secure something rarely accorded foreigners: the right to use a “Class A” historical relic and restore it — its tiling, wooden arches and fretwork, painted murals.”
“Indeed, most of the paintings here are underlaid with a fine fretwork of lines suggesting an architect's blueprint.”
The Wall Street Journal: A Whirl of Frenetic Markings and Vestigial Imagery
“The gilded fretwork on her door looked worthy of any Ardasi palace, but it had been carved by a local artisan following her drawings, not a wizened Khartoli master.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘fretwork’.
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Stalking Darkness
Words and phrases from Lynn Flewelling's book, Stalking Darkness.
inquest, halyard, catamount, occlude, founder, more, grouse, grapple, water butt, antepenultimate, palimpsest, hob and 196 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, F
felony, frolic, fend, fuselage, farthingale, freewheeling, frigorific, flummery, fancypants, felsitic, flagstone, flageolet and 295 more...
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patterns
ergodic, stochastic, stereopsis, echolocation, holocation, broker, map, intarsia, encipher, ocellus, muslin, mandelbrot set and 159 more...
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lanklenmot's Words
ineluctable, prelapsarian, bien pensant, prospero, preternatural, gratifying, iconoclast, cineast, persnickety, tumescent, galvanize, pap and 889 more...
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The Golem's Eye
Words and phrases from Jonathan Stroud's book, The Golem's Eye.
ordure, widdershins, cop, stipple, ostler, struts, minaret, chemise, remonstrate, concussion, wicket, vamoose and 249 more...
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The Basic Kafka
Words gathered while reading The Basic Kafka, a collection of the short fiction, aphorisms, letters, and diary entries of Franz Kafka.
endways, fretwork, dun, manoeuvre, uprush, hale, execrate, ministration, curtaining, conduce, propitiate, greatcoat and 35 more...
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toner's Words
contitute, flump, malice, agentivize, calumniate, deliberator, polder, disintermediating, disfluencies, parameterize, ulterior, nihonjinron and 86 more...
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Lattice
transenna, cancelli, cancel, ajour, open-steek, wickerwork, mashrebeeyah, cagework, filigree, network, graticule, reticle and 44 more...
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Chris4d's Words
transliteration, curriculum vitae, samizdat, ersatz, shoegaze, insouciant, enfilade, anhedonia, kismet, kvetch, desire line, argot and 19 more...
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batmasterson's Words
adumbrate, crepuscular, pulchritude, vainglorious bast..., bawd, enervate, gorn, caribou, vorpal, spork, defenestration, gambol and 61 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for fretwork.
chained_bear Crikey, it may as well be. That's what I think of whenever I see it. :) Jul 16, 2008
mollusque Hey c_b, is this related to preworrying? Jul 16, 2008