Wordsmiths - Can "fraught" be used by itself?

Factual Questions
1

Here’s a snippet from an article from Reuters today:

It was the latest incident in Harry’s sometimes fraught relations with photographers.

Is this an acceptable use of “fraught”? My dictionary - and my general sense - says that it requires the word “with” *and * a specification of the quality with which the relationship is fraught.

I guess this usage is supposed to mean “troubled” or “tense.” While the fuller usage often refers to something like this, it isn’t necessarily so (nor is it even necessarily negative.)

Is this something new? A British-ism?

2

Well according to the example sentence in 2nd meaning this it would appear that the usage you have cited is correct

  1. Filled with a specified element or elements; charged: an incident fraught with danger; an evening fraught with high drama.
  2. Marked by or causing distress; emotional: “an account of a fraught mother-daughter relationship”
3

It is an archaic past tense of “freight”, and in that sense means loaded, laden, freighted. Current usage tends more toward “involved” or “connected” and in most cases should be accompanied by “with.” I have no idea what the writer was trying to say.

4

From dictionary.com:

5

OK, thanks for the cites, guys. I guess it’s a usual usage.

But, on reading it, I was feeling the same way as Contrapunctual. I finished the sentence and was still waiting for the other shoe to drop, as to what the writer wanted me to know.