the.com/fritz
The exact moment your gadget quietly files for retirement.
means To stop working suddenly, usually due to an electrical or mechanical malfunction.
from Most likely rooted in the German/Yiddish personal name 'Fritz' (a nickname for Friedrich), which took on a slangy, mocking edge in American English — especially during the World War eras when 'Fritz' was used as a generic nickname for Germans. The phrase 'on the fritz,' meaning broken or malfunctioning, surfaced in American slang in the early 1900s, but exactly how a German nickname came to mean 'busted' is murky — one guess is that it imitated the sputtering 'fritz-fritz' sound of a dying machine, but that's folk etymology, not fact. The true leap from name to malfunction remains genuinely unsettled.
- origin
- from german slang meaning broken or worn out
- usage
- always paired with on, as in on the fritz
- first recorded
- early 1900s american slang, cause still unknown
- fun twist
- no actual person named fritz was ever responsible