The use of fritting for small nibbles probably comes from to fritter - to break into small pieces. But frit/fritting and fritter have completely different language roots.
That is an interesting theory. Generally frit is made by immersing hot glass in water. Rapid cooling and thermal shock causes the glass to harden and crumble.There are two ways this can be done.
1. Run molten glass from the furnace into a bucket of water.
2 Heat up broken glass (cullet) to about 500 degrees Celsius and drop into a bucket of water.
To a degree, Wrightoutlook is correct - this is a semantic argument. You can call these things whatever you like. Dealers and auctioneers are welcome to make up as many terms as they like. But they should not be misleading. For example, a fleabite is a very sensible term for a concoidal fracture. It can be instantly understood by anyone from a novice to an expert. This is because it conjures up a visual image and the term does not have any other meaning within glass making terminology.
To use the term "cullet" to describe a flaw in a paperweight, however, seems to me to be completely erroneous and I have never come across this. As stated clearly stated by others it has a completely different meaning in glass making terminology.
I'm 100% with my namesake, Adam D.
They're stones and at any given point most of us would dearly love to know whether they are formed from unmelted or devitrified batch, or whether they are part of the pot or in a tank furnace, the refractory bricks that have gradually been attacked by the corrosive properties of glass. The only way to tell is send them off to the lab to be analysed. Rather expensive.
You can hardly see the small ones when the glass is hot, but if you do, you can pull them out with tweezers and shears and melt in the shear marks. Easier said than done, specially with big pieces.