Ex. is it ok to say such and such is fraught. Full stop? In a case where the context makes it clear what its fraught with?
Learn English – Is it ok to use fraught in a sentence without saying what the thing is fraught with
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At all is a Negative Polarity Item (NPI). That means it is one of a long list of English words, phrases, idioms, and constructions that can only occur grammatically in a Negative environment.
Rather than being "awkward" or "ugly" (which are esthetic judgements and not grammar),
- *That makes sense to me at all.
is simply ungrammatical, since there is no negation present to license the use of at all. So it's incongruous here; what could it possibly add to the meaning in such an environment?
In a grammatical sentence, say,
- That doesn't make sense to me at all.
- That makes no sense to me at all.
- Nobody understands that at all.
at all functions as an intensifier of the negation, meaning something like 'in even the most insignificant manner'. But without a negative environment to license it, at all makes no sense at all.
There's a lot more to say about Negation and Negative Polarity, but this is a very simple case.
Edit: Specifically, just to get it all on the record, for the future, here's the list of Negative Triggers from http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/NPIs.pdf. (If-Clauses fall under "III. Hypothetical Clauses)
Negative ‘Triggers’
Notes:
- NPIs are illustrated here by the prototype English Negative Polarity Item any.
- *A asterisk before an sentence means (that) the sentence is ungrammatical.
- Parentheses indicate optional material (that) one can either omit or include.
The first few sentences give grammatical negatives versus ungrammatical affirmatives. After that you're expected to find your own ungrammatical affirmatives. (It's rather fun, actually; they really sound terrible)
I. Overt negatives:
A. not [w/ NPI clausemate or complement]
*He (did know/knew) anybody.
- He didn't know anybody.
- *He (did claim/claimed) (that) he knew anybody.
- He didn’t claim (that) he knew anybody.
- *He thought (that) he knew anybody.
He didn’t think (that) he knew anybody.
B. Incorporated negatives
I doubt (that) he knows anybody.
- It’s unlikely (that) he knows anybody.
- It’s improbable (that) he knows anybody.
- He dislikes anybody(’s) reminding him.
- He prevented her (from) seeing anyone.
I kept her from telling anybody.
C. Negative frequency adverbs
I seldom/rarely see any of them.
He hardly/scarcely knows anyone.
D. Quantifiers & quantified adverbs
Only Bill did any of the homework.
- Few people see any use for it.
- *A few people see any use for it. (few is negative; a few isn't)
II. Questions (overt and embedded)
- Did you see anybody?
- How does anybody stand this?
- I wonder how anybody stands this.
III. Hypothetical clauses.
- Tell me if you see anyone.
- He asked whether I saw anyone.
- Tell me whatever anybody says.
- Check the list again, lest we forget anyone.
- I’ll read it aloud, unless anyone objects.
IV. Comparatives, superlatives, etc.
- There’s more/less here than anybody knew.
- He prefers beer to any other drink.
- He’d rather die than hurt anyone.
- He’s as good as anyone expected.
- He’s the fastest one (that) anybody knows of.
- I saw him before anybody (did).
- I’m surprised (that) he knows anybody.
- It’s too dark to recognize anything.
- He left without anybody noticing (it).
- That’s hard/tough for anybody to do.
"Well" does not serve any grammatical usage in this sentence. That's because, in this context, "well" is an interjection, a word that expresses emotion. Depending on how it is enunciated, "well" could indicate impatience, surprise, nervousness, and a variety of other emotions.
However, here it seems to function as a filler, similar to "uh." It doesn't have any true meaning. People type it for the same reason as they type the interjections "oh" or "uh" - to convey emotion or to fill space while thinking of what to say.
Best Answer
This question came up in Ben Zimmer's "On Language" column in the May 21, 2010 New York Times. Zimmer does a nice job of outlining the history of the with-less fraught. In particular, he points to the 1920s as seeing the first occurrences of fraught "without even a hint of an object":
According to Zimmer, most of the increase in the usage has occurred in the past couple of decades. The entire column is well worth reading. Though Zimmer doesn't say so, I suspect that the usage may be much more firmly established in the United States than in the UK. In any event, I see it often in the New York Times and in the New Yorker.
A Google Books search turns up matches for unaided fraught as early as John Higgins, The Mirour for Magistrates (1587):
Here fraught means simply "freighted"—that is, laden or loaded.
By the 1800s, this earlier sense of stand-alone fraught had almost died out, and virtually all occurrences of fraught occurred in tandem with with. One of the few exceptions appears in a review of "The Obligations of the British Churches to Foreign Interference. A Sermon preached before the London Missionary Society, at Tottenham Court Chapel, May 12, 1825,By Richard Hamilton," in The Congregational Magazine (August 1825):
Another occurs in this speech from David Brown, The Prophet of St. Paul's, serialized in The North American Magazine (April 1835):
An from a London Clergyman, "A Summer Sunday on the Righi," in "Wind Wafted Seed" (1868):
The earliest twentieth-century instance of with-less fraught that a Google Books search finds is from "Unforgotten," in Genealogy of the Tapley Family (1900):
And the first prose occurrence is from Winifred James, Out of the Shadows (1924) [combined snippets]:
A Google Books search for "the fraught silence" (which may or may not be representative of the resurgent usage overall) returns dozens of matches; but only five are from before 1970, and most are from 1990 or later.