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.

Multiword verbs with fritter

• fritter away Phrasal verb C1

  to waste money, time, or another resource on unimportant things

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Fritter has two distinct histories. The noun for a piece of fried food comes through Late Latin frictura, “a frying.” The early 18th-century verb meaning “squander” is based on an older verb fitter, “to break into fragments or shred,” and may be related to German Fetzen, “rag” or “scrap.”

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.'

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary