fritter

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   to waste time, money, energy, or an opportunity gradually on unimportant things, usually with away

   Do not fritter away the morning on minor adjustments.

2. 2
   noun

   a piece of fruit, vegetable, meat, or other food coated or mixed with batter and fried

   She served a hot corn fritter with the soup.

3. 3
   noun

   archaically, a small fragment, shred, or piece

   The brittle sheet broke into fritters along its edge.

The noun comes through Middle French friture from Latin frigere, 'to fry.' Its old sense 'fragment or shred' probably helped produce the verb meaning to break something into small pieces and then the figurative phrase fritter away, 'waste little by little.'

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