Unfret
verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To smooth after being fretted. transitive
"My mind misgives: to Joppa will I fly, And for a while to Tharsus shape my course, Until the Lord unfret his angry brows."
- 2 To sooth or calm; to make or become less fretful or stressed. ambitransitive, broadly
""She'll be all right," Madge assured him. "Now you go out a while, and unfret yourself. It's a boy you've got.""
- 3 To remove (a string) from the frets of a musical instrument.
"Just as several notes can be played on a single bow, the guitarist can play several notes with a single pluck, using legato or ligado techniques in which the left hand continues to fret or unfret notes after the string has been plucked."
Example
More examples"My mind misgives: to Joppa will I fly, And for a while to Tharsus shape my course, Until the Lord unfret his angry brows."
Etymology
From un- + fret.
More for "unfret"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.