Fritter

//ˈfɹɪtɚ// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A dish made by deep-frying food coated in batter.
  2. 2
    small quantity of fried batter containing fruit or meat or vegetables wordnet
  3. 3
    A fragment; a shred; a small piece.

    "And cut whole giants into fritters."

Verb
  1. 1
    To squander or waste time, money, or other resources; e.g. occupy oneself idly or without clear purpose, to tinker with an unimportant part of a project, to dally, sometimes as a form of procrastination. intransitive, often

    "I was supposed to do work, but I frittered around all afternoon."

  2. 2
    spend frivolously and unwisely wordnet
  3. 3
    To sinter. transitive
  4. 4
    To cut (meat etc.) into small pieces for frying. transitive
  5. 5
    To break into small pieces or fragments. transitive

    "Break all nerves, and fritter all their sense."

Synonyms

All synonyms
afraidapple fritterbeignetbeignet aux pommesbismarckblow

Example

More examples

"Don't fritter away your allowance."

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English fryture, from Middle French friture, from Old French friture, from Vulgar Latin *frīctūra, from Latin frīgō (“to fry”); compare fry. For the development of Middle English /iu̯r(ə)/ into /ə(ɹ)/, compare armour, batter, border, solder.

Related phrases

French fritterapple frittercorn fritterfritter awayfritter batteroyster fritterrice fritterspam fritterdeep fry

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.