refret

re- +‎ fret

refret (third-person singular simple present refrets, present participle refretting, simple past and past participle refretted)

1. (transitive) To replace the frets on (a musical instrument).

   Can you refret my guitar?

From Middle English refreit, from Anglo-Norman refreit (“response”), refraindre (“to sing a refrain”); also Old French refreit (“refrain”). The Oxford English Dictionary suggests influence from an unattested Late Latin form, refrangere; compare Latin refractus (past participle). See refrain (noun), refract.

• refrette, refreite, refrayt, refraid, refrayde, refreyd

refret (plural refrets)

1. (obsolete) A refrain.
   • 1820, Samuel Weller Singer, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet Prince of Denmark‎, page 136:

     Our old English term refrette, ‘the foote of the dittie, a verse often interlaced, or the burden of a song,’ was probably from refrain; or from refresteler, to pipe over again. […] ‘Refrain, the refret, burthen, or downe of a ballad.’ All this discussion is rendered necessary, because Steevens unfortunately forgot to note from whence he made the following extract,

   • 1847, E.W. Hengstenberg, translated by J.E. Ryland, Dissertations on the Genuineness of the Pentateuch‎, volume 1, page 143:

     The refret or burden of the song in ver. 6, 8, 9, 10, “Yet have ye not returned to me,” […] alludes to Deut. iv. 29(30),

• “refret”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “refraid, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, September 2009.

• ferret