To them, the fraying of the city's social fabric is personal.

You can already feel, beneath the surface, the fraying of the bonds.

"I worry a lot about the fraying of the civic culture, but we have to understand that is going on around the world," he said.

Even Republicans said they were stunned by the fraying of nerves so early in the year.

One result of the changed conditions is a fraying of this social fabric.

They are reeling from Bush program cuts and the fraying of medical safety nets.

Expect him to declare peace for our time and accede to the fraying of sanctions.

Meanwhile, a slow fraying of the marriage - never openly avowed - clearly began.

The sea was calm, and except for a slight fraying of the barrier cables, the spacecraft might never have been.

And then he felt the shifting shape of the man he held, the fraying of form beneath him.

These mountings helps prevent the fraying of the leather or parchment and were decorative.

It would have been $30, if not for the slight fraying of its cord; it seemed to need nothing more than a little polishing.

This is a novel about the fraying of reason under the stress of unanswerable emotional demands.

"But the fraying of the family-friendly package could lead to an à la carte world."

She felt the bed beneath her, heard the creaking of springs, knew the fraying of reality as his body moved to rest beside hers.

When valve failure occurred, it was not due to abrasion but through progressive fraying of the pericardium.

The frenzy of runs and runners officially ended in the ninth, although not without a certain fraying of nerves.

A magnetic resonance imaging scan this morning revealed a fraying of the tendon and a minor tear.

The cultural cold war began in postwar Europe, with the fraying of the wartime alliance between Washington and Moscow.

Nor is there any independent way of confirming that a reported fraying of the Taliban's ranks is real.

Her ire betrayed the fraying of her nerves.

One unintended result of the hard-nosed bargaining is a further fraying of the inter-republic fabric.

Anthony Lewis: The fraying of hope.

And the wear and tear on our equipment is significant, leading to what has been termed as a fraying of our force."

In the last few months, those revenues have been going into Mr. Hussein's pockets, illustrating the fraying of the sanctions.

He spent several years living with his parents, but that relationship frayed.

But as of late, her political connections seem to have frayed.

There is evidence to suggest, however that their relationship frayed in later life.

Indeed, they appear to be fraying at exactly the wrong time.

Its end had frayed and I fixed a new one on it.

It was quite good strong rope, frayed only in one place.

But then slowly the anger frayed out of her face.

Then, while his mind frayed out into the hungry dark, he made an effort to do the same for himself.

The Soviet party has been fraying more with each new crisis.

Oh the this iron's fraying on the end for some reason.

But political experts here said the dispute had frayed their relationship.

A heat wave that has frayed the country for more than a week may have kept many of them away.

He at once saw that the broken ends were frayed.

Some of the material, like its author, is a bit frayed around the edges.

Over time, the consensus on the part of politicians has frayed.

His nerves were frayed almost to the breaking point, now.

Their nerves were frayed so thin that anything could happen.

It had not frayed and finally parted after long wear.

While waiting always frays the nerves of those who have only time to think.

Maybe it had been frayed in the course of the descent into the mine.

But their situation had changed for the worse, and now her nerves were frayed again.

The community is not coming apart, but its edges are fraying.

They had been over this a hundred times, and she saw that his nerves were frayed.

But the world had changed, and the rule of law was getting more than a little frayed around the edges.

It's like a piece of cloth where the edge has frayed.