Word.ws English Dictionary

frain

US/ˈfɹeɪn/

frain verb: to ask, inquire.

Verb

frain (third-person singular simple present frains, present participle fraining, simple past and past participle frained)

  1. (dialectal, obsolete, transitive) To ask, inquire.
    • Ones yet agayne Of you I wolde frayne, Why come ye nat to court ?1522, John Skelton, Why come ye nat to Courte
    • Theyr myndes disdayne: Gods actes to frain …1555, Henry Parker, The Exposition and Declaration of the Psalme Deus ultionum dominus, XXVIII.

Proper noun capitalized: Frain

Frain

  1. A surname from Old French.

Forms of frain

third-person singular presentfrains
present participlefraining
past participlefrained
pastfrained
alternative formfrein
alternative formfrane
alternative form (obsolete)fraine
alternative form (obsolete)frayn
alternative form (obsolete)frayne
alternative form (obsolete)freyne

Origin of frain

From Middle English fraynen, freinen (“to ask”), from Old English freġnan, friġnan (“to ask, inquire, learn”), from Proto-West Germanic *fregnan, from Proto-Germanic *frehnaną (“to ask”), from Proto-Indo-European *preḱ- (“to ask, woo”). Cognates Cognate with Icelandic fregna (“to ask, inquire”), Gothic 𐍆𐍂𐌰𐌹𐌷𐌽𐌰𐌽 (fraihnan, “to ask”). Related also to Dutch vragen (“to ask”), German fragen (“to ask”), Norwegian frega (“to ask”), Latin precor (“ask, beseech”), Sanskrit पृच्छति (pṛccháti, “to ask”), Lithuanian prašyti (“to request”), Polish prosić (“to request”).

From Old French fraisne.

Words formed from frain

Words that rhyme with frain

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about frain

What does frain mean?
Frain means to ask, inquire.
What part of speech is frain?
Frain can be a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce frain?
Frain is pronounced /ˈfɹeɪn/ (US).
What is the past tense of frain?
The past tense of frain is frained.

Words near frain in the dictionary

  1. frailsome
  2. frailties
  3. frailty
  4. fraim
  5. fraims
  6. frain
  7. frained
  8. fraining
  9. frains
  10. Fraioli
  11. Fraiolis

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: frain (page history and authors); Frain (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “frain.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/frain. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.