# fry

Pronunciation: say "FRY" /fɹaɪ/

## Verb

1. To cook something in hot fat or oil, usually in a pan.
   - Simple: To cook food in hot oil or fat.
   - _She fries chicken every Sunday for the family dinner._
   - _He prefers to fry fish in butter instead of oil._
3. To cook in hot fat, as food does while it sizzles in a pan.
   - Simple: To cook in hot oil, the way bacon cooks in a pan.
   - _Strips of bacon fried slowly over the campfire._
   - _Potatoes fry best in oil that is already hot._
4. To destroy something, usually an electronic device, often through overheating or an electrical overload. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: To break a machine or electronic device by sending too much power or heat through it.
   - _A power surge fried the motherboard overnight._
   - _Using the wrong charger can fry a phone's battery._
6. To suffer because of exposure to too much heat. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: To feel very hot and uncomfortable, often in the sun.
   - _Tourists fry on the sand by midday in August._
   - _I was frying in the parked car until the air conditioning kicked in._
7. To execute someone by means of the electric chair, or to be executed in one. *(slang, US)*
   - Simple: To kill someone in the electric chair, or to die in it.
   - _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._
18. To make a brushwood drain in land; to drain a field by laying covered bundles of brushwood. *(dialectal)*
   - Simple: To drain land by putting bundles of branches under the ground.
   - _The estate hired laborers to fry the waterlogged pastures along the river._
   - _He fried the orchard himself, cutting and bundling the willow rods over one winter._

## Noun

2. A piece of cut potato fried in hot oil. *(Canada, US)*
   - Simple: A long thin piece of potato cooked 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._
5. Young fish, especially newly hatched ones.
   - Simple: Very young fish that have just come out of their eggs.
   - _The hatchery releases millions of salmon fry into the river each spring._
   - _Herons wade through the shallows, hunting fry in the warm water._
8. A meal, typically breakfast, consisting of fried foods such as sausages, bacon, and eggs. *(British, Ireland)*
   - Simple: A breakfast meal of fried foods like eggs, bacon, and sausages.
   - _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._
9. A testicle of a lamb or calf, especially one prepared as food. *(US)*
   - Simple: A testicle from a lamb or a young cow, eaten 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._
10. The liver of a lamb, especially when prepared or sold as food. *(Australia, New Zealand)*
   - Simple: The liver of a lamb, used 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._
11. Offspring; the children of a person or the young of an animal, considered as a group. *(dialectal, UK)*
   - Simple: A person's children, or all the young of an animal.
   - _The farmer's wife arrived at chapel with her whole fry scrubbed and dressed for Sunday._
   - _A vixen will move her fry to a new den at the first sign of danger._
12. The spawn of frogs; the jellylike mass of eggs that frogs lay in ponds and other still water. *(dialectal, UK)*
   - Simple: The eggs of frogs, found as soft jelly in ponds and streams.
   - _Clumps of fry drifted near the bank where the frogs had gathered all week._
   - _By April the fry had hatched, and the shallows wriggled with tadpoles._
16. A kind of sieve; a utensil with a perforated or meshed surface for separating finer material from coarser pieces.
   - Simple: A tool with many small holes, used to separate small bits from larger pieces.
   - _The miller passed the fresh meal through a fry to separate out the coarse bran._
   - _Workers sifted the riverbed gravel in a broad fry, keeping whatever would not pass through._
17. A drain, typically one formed by filling a trench with brushwood so that water can pass through the ground.
   - Simple: A drain under the ground made from bundles of branches.
   - _They laid a fry of hazel branches along the trench before covering it with soil._
   - _After heavy rain, the old fry under the meadow still carried runoff to the stream._

## Noun

13. A swarm; a teeming crowd or mass, especially of something small. *(archaic)*
   - Simple: A large moving crowd of small creatures or things.
   - _The diarist complained of the fry of clerks and hangers-on filling the minister's antechamber._
   - _All summer the fry of flies tormented the horses in the lower pasture._
14. A state of excitement; a stir or commotion of feeling. *(archaic)*
   - Simple: A time or state when someone is very excited or upset.
   - _News of the inheritance threw the household into a fry that lasted a week._
   - _He was in a terrible fry, pacing the hall and demanding his horse be saddled._

## Verb

15. To simmer or boil; to cook in or bubble with hot liquid. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: To boil, or to cook slowly in bubbling liquid.
   - _Set the kettle on and let the water fry before you add the barley._
   - _The stew fried softly at the back of the hearth through the long afternoon._

## Origin

**Meanings 1–4, 6–10, 14–15** — From Middle English fryen, borrowed from Old French frire, from Latin frīgō ('to roast, fry'), going back to Proto-Indo-European. It is related to Ancient Greek phrúgō ('I roast, bake') and Sanskrit words for roasting, and it replaced the native Old English hierstan ('to fry').
**Meanings 5, 11–13** — From Middle English frie ('spawn of fish, young fish, offspring'), probably from Old Norse frjó ('seed, semen'), from Proto-Germanic *fraiwą, going back to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'to strew, sow'. It is related to Icelandic frjó and Swedish frö ('seed'), and likely merged with Old French words for spawning derived from Latin fricō ('to rub').
**Meanings 16–18** — Dialectal and of obscure origin, perhaps related to or a corruption of frith ('a wood, forest', also 'brushwood, wattle'), from Middle English fryth, frith ('forest, woodland, a fence of brush or wattle, hedge').

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/fry (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).