Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The fused or partially fused materials used in making glass.
  • noun A vitreous substance used in making porcelain, glazes, or enamels.
  • transitive verb To make into frit.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To decompose and fuse partially, as the ingredients mixed for making glass, before completely fusing at a much higher temperature.
  • noun The material of which glass is made as prepared for complete fusion by a previous calcination carried to a point where the silica begins to act on the bases, forming an imperfectly melted or fritted mass.
  • noun The composition from which artificial soft or tender porcelain and other partly vitrifiable mixtures are made. See soft porcelain, under porcelain.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Glass Making) The material of which glass is made, after having been calcined or partly fused in a furnace, but before vitrification. It is a composition of silex and alkali, occasionally with other ingredients.
  • noun (Ceramics) The material for glaze of pottery.
  • noun a lump of calcined glass materials, brought to a pasty condition in a reverberatory furnace, preliminary to the perfect vitrification in the melting pot.
  • transitive verb rare To fritter; -- with away.
  • transitive verb To prepare by heat (the materials for making glass); to fuse partially.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective UK, dialect frightened
  • noun A fused mixture of materials used to make glass
  • verb To add frit to a glass or ceramic mixture

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Italian fritta, from feminine past participle of friggere, to fry, from Latin frīgere, to roast, fry.]

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Examples

  • In modern French, the term frit is generally reserved for fried potatoes (pommes frites), while fritters are known as beignets.

    post-gazette.com - News 2009

  • In modern French, the term frit is generally reserved for fried potatoes (pommes frites), while fritters are known as beignets.

    post-gazette.com - News 2009

  • A frit is a combination of a flux or several fluxes (lead, borax, boric acid, potassium carbonate) that is combined with other insoluble materials (quartz, feldspar, lime etc.), melted in a kiln to form an insoluble glass, and ground to be used as the base for making glazes.

    7. Frits and fritmaking 1993

  • The insulated glass has a silk-screened pattern -- called a frit or fritting -- that reduces solar glare and helps birds identify it as a solid object.

    StarTribune.com rss feed 2011

  • Like Margaret Thatcher with her famous use of the dialect word "frit", Cameron likes to do the common man bit.

    The Guardian World News Peter Walker 2011

  • Small jars filled with sand grain-sized pieces of glass, called frit, line the opposite wall.

    The Vail Trail - All Sections 2009

  • If Brown backs away, he's "frit" and Davis can make that point.

    On Thursday, the Legg report will be published along with... 2008

  • In 2004, with Blair hanging on by his fingertips, I wrote a piece suggesting Brown might not have what it takes to become a leader, and accusing him of being "frit" — a colloquialism of Margaret Thatcher's from her native Lincolnshire that translates loosely as "cowardly."

    Haunted By ‘Courage’ 2008

  • No, Mr Bingham, it is a shame that Tories were so "frit" at the prospect of an election that they rolled out a series of dog whistles like this one, added a soupcon of ridiculous mendacious memory man act, and topped it all off with a sprig of big bad money lies.

    Archive 2007-11-04 2007

  • No, Mr Bingham, it is a shame that Tories were so "frit" at the prospect of an election that they rolled out a series of dog whistles like this one, added a soupcon of ridiculous mendacious memory man act, and topped it all off with a sprig of big bad money lies.

    MPs Expenses: 77% People of Buxton Say "Good Value" 2007

Comments

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  • In glassmaking, this refers to batch ingredients such as sand and alkali that have partially reacted from heating but have not completely melted. After cooling, frit is ground to a powder and melted. Fritting (or sintering) is the process of making frit.

    November 9, 2007

  • “The pattern on top of the treads is a baked-on finish, known as a frit, that keeps the surface from being slippery when wet.�?

    The New York Times, Come and Meet Those Stepping Feet, by David W. Dunlap, October 16, 2008

    October 17, 2008