Word of the Day:

"We might think replicating one of these ideas will deliver that perfectly walkable, equitable, sustainable and prosperous city of our hopeful imagination. Not likely. Many of these were hard wins, often fraught and contested in their local context." — Gia Biagi, The Chicago Tribune, 5 Apr. 2026

More example sentences

An early instance of the word fraught occurs in the 14th century poem Richard Coer de Lyon, about England's King Richard I, aka Richard the Lionheart. The line "The drowmound was so hevy fraught / That unethe myght it saylen aught" describes a large fast-sailing ship so heavily fraught—that is, loaded—that it can barely sail. The poet's use of fraught is typical for the time; originally, something that was fraught was laden with freight. For centuries, fraught continued to be used in relation to loaded ships, but that use is now considered archaic. These days, fraught is used in reference to situations that are heavy with tension, emotion, or some other weighty characteristic.