All this bickering is starting to fray my nerves.

Flushed with success and eager for the fray, / "Friends," cries Coroebus, "forward; let us go / where Fortune newly smiling, points the way."

That extension cord looks dangerous to me. You see where it's frayed there?

The way he returned into the fray to rescue his comrade is, for lack of a better word, praiseworthy.

I do not believe progress is possible if our desire to preserve our identities gives way to an impulse to dehumanize or dominate another group. If our religion leads us to persecute those of another faith, if we jail or beat people who are gay, if our traditions lead us to prevent girls from going to school, if we discriminate on the basis of race or tribe or ethnicity, then the fragile bonds of civilization will fray.

Frayed electrical cables can be very dangerous.

Tom turned up at the party unshaven, wearing a crumpled shirt and trousers that were fraying.

High in the citadel the monstrous frame / pours forth an armed deluge to the day, / and Sinon, puffed with triumph, spreads the flame. / Part throng the gates, part block each narrow way; / such hosts Mycenae sends, such thousands to the fray."

Detective Columbo is always in a frayed raincoat.

So when their screams descending fill the strand, / Misenus from his outlook sounds the fray.