frab

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fɹæb/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Verb

frab (third-person singular simple present frabs, present participle frabbing, simple past and past participle frabbed)

1. (UK, dialect, archaic) To scold, nag, or harass.
   • 1827, Lee Gibbons, Owain Goch:

     Dunna think we'll sit siking and frabbing, because hur's took up with that dainty doll

   • 1848, [Elizabeth Gaskell], Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life. […] (Chapman and Hall’s Series of Original Works of Fiction, Biography, and General Literature), volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC:

     "I did not make him as happy as I might ha' done," murmured she, in a low, sad voice of self-reproach. "Th' accident gave a jar to my temper it's never got the better of; and now he's gone where he can never know how I grieve for having frabbed him as I did."

   • 1864 August – 1866 January, [Elizabeth] Gaskell, Wives and Daughters. An Every-day Story. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], published 1866, →OCLC:

     Oh! I can nearly say it all off by heart, for many a time when I am frabbed by bad debts, or Osborne's bills, or moidered with accounts, I turn the ledger wrong way up, and smoke a pipe over it, while I read those pieces out of the review which speak about you, lad!'

References

• “frab”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Anagrams

• barf, farb