Fraught

[Dr. Goodword]

• fraught •

Pronunciation: frawt • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: 1. Laden, having a lot of, heavy or filled (with). 2. Over-wrought, nervous, tense, on the brink of breaking down, as someone nervous and fraught.

Notes: Today's Good Word is an odd little adjective fraught with the common silent GH in English (from a former sound like Scottish or German CH). It is used with the preposition with, as 'to be fraught with danger'. There is no noun or verb form for this adjective; it is out there all alone. The second meaning suggests that it is being associated with fear and afraid, but that is not what its history tells us.

In Play: That this word lurks about the periphery of the current English vocabulary also contributes toward its slightly pejorative connotation today: "Gildersleeve felt the offer to work on an oil rig too fraught with danger for him." However, this word itself is not pejorative and may be used in quite positive settings: "Francis considered restaurants places fraught with opportunities for fleshly—and fleshy—delights."

Word History: Today's Good Word is solidly English, not borrowed, begged, or stolen. It is the past participle of the Middle English verb, fraughten "to load" and is still used to mean "cargo, freight" in parts of Scotland. It is strictly Germanic, related to Dutch vracht, German Fracht, Danish fragt, and Swedish frakt, all with pretty much the same meanings. Etymologists surmise that it goes back to an Old Germanic derivation fra-, an intensive prefix, + aihtiz "property". If so, the root is the same one that underlies the verb owe, especially the former past participle of that verb, ought. (We hope that Jeremy Busch understands that our write-up of today's Good Word is fraught with gratitude to him for suggesting it.)

[LukeJavan8]

we stand fraught with gratitude, indeed.

[damoge]

Given the german and dutch words, is that where we also got "freight"?

[rrentner]

Fraught is a word that I hear increasingly in the news (perhaps an indictment against the current political situation?), but more and more, I hear it used without the preposition "with". "The situation between the pro-party and the con-party is fraught." Or, "The atmosphere was fraught when the pro-choice person walked up to the microphone at the pro-life rally." I have always thought of fraught as functioning much like "filled", or the non-childbearing use of "pregnant", as in, "The moment was pregnant with opportunity." I suspect that since pregnant can be used without the preposition (a "pregnant" pause; and we never say someone is "pregnant with child", perhaps because it seems redundant), fraught imitates pregnant in this way. As Dr. Goodward suggests, though, usage of fraught has mostly been pejorative: "fraught with fear" or "fraught with tension"; and rarely "with joy" or "with happiness". So perhaps the meaning is mostly unambiguous today. Yet, after hearing a news commentator say that some situation or event is fraught, I still want to ask, "fraught with what?"

[Dr. Goodword]

Is this word related to freight? Yes, it comes from the same Proto-Germanic word.

[Philip Hudson]

rrentner: Thanks for the insightful response. Post often. Good Doctor: I haven't heard any reference Gildersleeve in many a year. If you wish you may listen The Great Gildersleeve at https://archive.org/details/Otrr_The_Gr ... n_Show.mp3

Working on an oil rig is certainly fraught with danger. Several of my uncles had severed fingers. The first day on the job, a pipe fell on my father's toes breaking all of them. His shoes were regulation steel toed shoes. The next time Dad worked on an oil rig, he was took the job as "tower man" and thus safe from anything except a meteorite falling on him. Note: they don't have tower men on modern rigs.

[Dr. Goodword]

Thanks for the link, Phillip. Voices from the past. As a child I listened to the Great Gildersleeve every week--was it on Wednesday night? I also saw at least two of the Gildersleeve movies. My parents had a console radio which I moved right up to and let my imagination run wild.

[Philip Hudson]

Radio before TV was great. We used our imagination to "see" the scenes. Sometimes movies were produced about these radio characters. I had "seen" Fibber McGee open the hall closed door many times on radio. It was nice to see it once at the movies. But I didn't need to physically see to believe.

I put my Christian faith on a higher level than radio or TV, but the same truth obtains. We are blessed by Jesus without seeing him with our eyes.

[Slava]

Would "freighted" be a synonym?

[Dr. Goodword]

In one sense of fraught, yes. I would say "close synonyms", since I've heard and read arguments in linguistics that there are no exact synonyms.