An archaic or obsolete past tense form meaning 'broke' or 'fractured,' rarely used in modern English.
From Old English and Germanic roots related to 'break' and 'fracture.' The word belongs to a family of verbs describing fragmentation that have mostly been replaced by more common terms.
This word is a linguistic fossil—most 'fre-' break verbs faded from English, but you can still spot them in place names and old legal documents where they described physical damage.
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