freak
Forms
- Plural
- freaks
- present (v1)
- freak
- past (v2)
- freaked
- past participle (v3)
- freaked
- present participle
- freaking
- 3rd person singular
- freaks
Definitions
1.Someone or something that is markedly unusual or unpredictable.
- The two-headed calf was a freak.
- And I may answer with another question. Why is a two-headed calf? And my own answer to this is that it is a freak.
- It is a freak that people talk about when they see it. Not everyone calls it by the right name, and few people know how it gets to be what it is. This freak is hail.
2.A person who is extremely abnormal in appearance, social behavior, sexual orientation, gender identity, or business practices; an oddball, a unique person, originally in a displeasing or alienating way.(slang)
- Smith and Sturges [June 1969] note in their study of the San Francisco drug scene that freak means "anyone addicted to drugs."
- Gentrification often starts with the artists, revolutionaries, freaks, transfolks, and queers (what I would call my people) moving into poor neighborhoods inhabited by people of color.
- St. Bart’s was not particularly pleased either with Lake’s methods or with their results, but kept him on because it was fashionable to have at least one distinguished freak on the staff.
3.A person whose physique has grown far beyond the normal limits of muscular development; often a bodybuilder weighing more than 260 pounds (120 kg).
4.An enthusiast, or person who has an obsession with, or extreme knowledge of, something.
- Bob's a real video-game freak. He owns every games console of the last ten years.
- Presently […] college students […] use freak to denote any kind of enthusiast.
- Anyone […] who seems "hung up" on some idea, activity or interactional disposition, might be called a "freak."
1.To react extremely or irrationally, usually under distress or discomposure.(slang)
- But after one night turned into five days, I was freaking out. I missed him.
- When the owner found a bunch of beatniks in there, he freaked, but that was later.
2.To be placed or place someone under the influence of a psychedelic drug, (especially) to experience reality withdrawal, or hallucinations (nightmarish), to behave irrational or unconventional due to drug use.(slang)
1.Strange, weird, unexpected.
- A freak goal gave Forest the lead when a clearance by keeper John Ruddy bounced off Nathan Tyson and flew in.
- Sadness of some shape will now perhaps forever be associated with this satire which won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes film festival: its beautiful young star Charlbi Dean died in August of a freak infection.
Frequency
Overall
Rare· #4545
By learning goal
- Everyday conversation
- Rare
- General reading & writing
- Rare
- Academic
- Rare
- Literature
- Rare
Related words
Synonyms
Etymology
First appears c. 1567. The sense "sudden change of mind, a whim" is of uncertain origin. Probably from a dialectal word related to Middle English frekynge (“capricious behavior; whims”) and Middle English friken, frikien (“to move briskly or nimbly”), from Old English frīcian (“to leap, dance”), or Middle English frek (“insolent, daring”), from Old English frec (“desirous, greedy, eager, bold, daring”), from Proto-West Germanic *frek, from Proto-Germanic *frekaz, *frakaz (“hard, efficient, greedy, bold, audacious”) (in which case, it would be related to the noun under Etymology 2). Compare Old High German freh (“eager”), Old English frēcne (“dangerous”).