Fraught Is a Heavy Word

Fraught Is a Heavy Word â€Å"Fraught† Is a Heavy Word â€Å"Fraught† Is a Heavy Word By Mark Nichol Fraught, one of my favorite words, is fraught with meaning. The term, a variant of freight, was originally a noun and an adjective, with a verb form of fraughten. However, the noun, meaning â€Å"cargo,† disappeared from English (though it survives in Scottish), the verb is entirely extinct, and the adjectival form, which means â€Å"laden, full of† has survived only (with the exception, again, of Scottish) in its centuries-old figurative sense. Now, when a situation is fraught, it is accompanied by, or full of, a feeling usually danger, peril, or some synonymous (and usually sinister) quality. There are exceptions: Note the use in the first paragraph of this post, and a place can be said to be fraught with memories, which may be positive, negative, or a combination thereof. However, because of the word’s often negative connotation, fraught has developed an additional sense of â€Å"uneasy,† and when used this way, it requires no object. For example, one might write, â€Å"We found ourselves in a fraught predicament.† In conversation and in writing, use of the word is fraught with consequences: For one thing, it’s a fairly obscure term, though â€Å"fraught with (blank)† constructions are common enough to form a class of clichà ©s. Furthermore, the use of fraught in the sense of a situation involving emotional turmoil may be unfamiliar to your audience. But fraught is loaded with the strength of precision its meanings are sparse and specific, so it packs a punch and you should hesitate to allow a potent word’s relative rarity to disqualify it from your vocabulary. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Vocabulary category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Comparative Forms of AdjectivesOne Sheep, Two Sheep, One Fish, Two Fish . . .Artist vs. Artisan