fry

Formsfries, frying, fried

Pluralfries

1. 1
   verbtransitive

   To cook something in hot fat or oil, usually in a pan.

   She fries chicken every Sunday for the family dinner.

   He prefers to fry fish in butter instead of oil.

   Note

   The kitchen verb comes from Latin frīgō, "to roast, fry," by way of Old French frire. Its relatives include Greek phrúgō, "I roast," and a Sanskrit word for the crackling of fire. Here the cook is the subject and the food is the object (I am frying the eggs), while its intransitive partner makes the food the subject. The past tense and past participle are both fried.

2. 2
   nounCanadaUScountable

   A piece of cut potato fried in hot oil.

   A single fry fell out of the bag and onto the car seat.

   The diner serves its fries hot and heavily salted.

   Similarchip

   Note

   Canadian and American usage keeps this almost always in the plural, as in a basket of fries, and the singular is the exception. French fry is the fuller name, and chip is its synonym. The plural fries also names the ranch-kitchen delicacy, a different dish entirely, so on a menu the context has to do the work of telling them apart.

3. 3
   verbintransitive

   To cook in hot fat, as food does while it sizzles in a pan.

   Strips of bacon fried slowly over the campfire.

   Potatoes fry best in oil that is already hot.

4. 4
   verbcolloquialtransitive

   To destroy something, usually an electronic device, often through overheating or an electrical overload.

   A power surge fried the motherboard overnight.

   Using the wrong charger can fry a phone's battery.

   Similardestroy, blow

   Note

   A workbench word for burning out a component, as in fry the resistor or fry the motherboard. It also travels easily into talk about the mind: years of drugs fried his brain. Both uses are informal. In technical writing, burn out or damage says the same thing in a neutral register.

5. 5
   noununcountable

   Young fish, especially newly hatched ones.

   The hatchery releases millions of salmon fry into the river each spring.

   Herons wade through the shallows, hunting fry in the warm water.

   Note

   A separate word that only shares the spelling with the cooking verb. It comes from Middle English frie and probably from Old Norse frjó, "seed," which goes back to a root meaning "to strew, sow." It works as a collective noun, as in salmon fry or a river full of fry, rather than counting single fish. Milton's Areopagitica (1644) spells it frie and sets the good fish apart from the other fry.

6. 6
   verbcolloquialintransitive

   To suffer because of exposure to too much heat.

   Tourists fry on the sand by midday in August.

   I was frying in the parked car until the air conditioning kicked in.

   Similarroast, bake, swelter, boil

   Oppositefreeze

7. 7
   verbslangUStransitive or intransitive

   To execute someone by means of the electric chair, or to be executed in one.

   Reporters filled the courtroom, certain the jury would send him off to fry.

   The state fried three men that decade before ending use of the chair.

   Similarelectrocute

   Note

   Kitchen talk turned grim: the verb for cooking in hot fat became, chiefly in American slang, a way of speaking about death by electric current. It runs both ways, so the state fries a prisoner, or a prisoner is going to fry. Being slang, and blunt about a killing, it suits tough talk rather than sober reporting; the burnt-out electronics sense uses the same picture of current as heat.

8. 8
   nounBritishIrelandcountable

   A meal, typically breakfast, consisting of fried foods such as sausages, bacon, and eggs.

   After the night shift, the lads went for a fry at the local café.

   A full fry at that pub comes with beans, toast, and grilled tomatoes.

   Similarfry-up

   Note

   British and Irish speakers use this as an ordinary countable noun: you go for a fry or order a full fry, and fry-up is its longer synonym. Potatoes are not the point here. In these varieties a fry is the whole plate of sausages, bacon and eggs, not the North American potato strip.

9. 9
   nounUScountable

   A testicle of a lamb or calf, especially one prepared as food.

   Ranch hands gathered the fries at branding time and grilled them that evening.

   He cut into the fry (a calf testicle, battered and golden) and admitted the ranch delicacy deserved its reputation.

   Note

   An American cooking term, usually plural, whose name describes the cooking rather than the organ. Its other names do the same kind of tactful work. Prairie oyster and Rocky Mountain oyster describe what the dish is likened to, not what it is. Tendergroin is the rarer, plainer-spoken alternative.

10. 10
    nounAustraliaNew Zealanduncountable

    The liver of a lamb, especially when prepared or sold as food.

    The farm shop sells fry from its own lambs alongside kidneys and other organ meats.

    Traditional farmhouse cooks served fry, cooked with onions, the morning after a lamb was butchered.

    Similarliver

    Note

    This is a butcher's-counter word in Australia and New Zealand, where what is sold as fry is lamb's liver. For readers elsewhere, liver is the word that will be understood. It is one of several offal meanings the noun carries, and the American ranch dish is a different organ altogether, so what fry means on a menu depends on where you are reading it.

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