1
: cooked in hot oil or butter : cooked by frying
fried eggs
fried chicken
fried dough
2
: damaged or destroyed by an electrical surge or malfunction
The man behind the counter hooked up my computer to another machine and then gave me the bad news. "I'm afraid your hard drive is fried," the technician said.Tom McNichol
3
US, informal
a
: intoxicated, high
… too fried on crystal meth to be gambling on a game of pool, but doing it nonetheless.Joseph Wambaugh
… what about that time you got fried at the frat house after the big game against State and the judge fined you $50 and costs for dropping quarts of beer in paper bags out the second-floor window?Russell Baker
b
: mentally exhausted
At dinner after the book signing, he's fried, barely able to converse.Rick Martin
After spending about 14 hours on ESPN Radio, SportsCenter and espn.com, Gammons was completely fried.Rich Eisen

Examples of fried in a Sentence

Sorry, I'm just fried today. grew up in a family in which Dad got fried on every weekend and holiday
Recent Examples on the Web
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
In one particularly frantic game, Tottenham Hotspur’s collective head was so fried that keeper Heurelho Gomes accidentally knocked out his team-mate, Alan Hutton, in trying to deal with an aerial ball. Nick Miller, New York Times, 22 May 2025 Try making fried rice Umami’s still a new concept for many cooks. Lynda Balslev, Mercury News, 21 May 2025 Its menu, not yet finalized, will feature Nigerian pepper soup with turkey breast, red chili and olive oil, roast beef kebabs with black and red pepper and passata (uncooked tomato puree), along with whole fried and stewed fish. Phillip Valys, Sun Sentinel, 13 May 2025 Several controllers went on trauma leave in the wake of the outage, which appears to at least in part be due to a fried copper wire. Kris Van Cleave, CBS News, 8 May 2025 See All Example Sentences for fried

Word History

First Known Use

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Time Traveler
The first known use of fried was in the 14th century

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Cite this Entry

“Fried.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fried. Accessed 29 May. 2025.

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