fried

adjective

ˈfrīd 

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

Synonyms

• besotted
• blasted [slang]
• blind
• blitzed [slang]
• blotto [slang]
• bombed
• boozy
• canned [slang]
• cockeyed
• crocked
• drunk
• drunken
• gassed
• hammered [slang]
• high
• impaired
• inebriate
• inebriated
• intoxicated
• juiced [slang]
• lit
• lit up
• loaded [slang]
• looped
• oiled [slang]
• pickled
• pie-eyed
• plastered
• potted [slang]
• ripped [slang]
• sloshed [slang]
• smashed [slang]
• sottish
• soused
• sozzled
• squiffed
• squiffy
• stewed
• stiff
• stinking [slang]
• stoned
• tanked [slang]
• tiddly [chiefly British]
• tight
• tipsy
• wasted [slang]
• wet
• wiped out [slang]

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

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

Word History

First Known Use

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Phrases Containing fried

• chicken-fried steak
• fried rice

Rhymes for fried

• bide
• bride
• chide
• cried
• died
• dried
• dyed
• eid
• eide
• eyed
• flied
• glide