Word.ws English Dictionary

freak

/fɹiːk//fɹiːk/

freak noun: someone or something that is markedly unusual or unpredictable. Also the euphemistic form of fuck.

Noun (1)

freak (plural freaks)

  1. (dated outside certain expressions) Someone or something that is markedly unusual or unpredictable.
    • The two-headed calf was a freak.
    • freak of nature, freak of the weather, freak of the imagination
  2. (derogatory, slang) 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.
    • 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.1957 March 7, Vladimir Nabokov, chapter 4.5, in Pnin, Heinemann, page 96
    • 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.2005, Inga Muscio, Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil: […], Seal Press, →ISBN, page 74
    1. (derogatory, slang) A hippie.
      • When long-haired, outlandishly dressed, drug-using hippies pilgrimaged to Haight-Ashbury in the early 1960s, they were quickly dubbed freaks; the pejorative appellation was both obvious and intended. It was not long before freak had become practically synonymous with hippie. It seems, however, that...[1969, Paul A. Eschholz, “Freak compounds for 'argot freaks'”, in American Speech, volume 44, number 4, →DOI, pages 306–307
    2. (derogatory, slang) A drug addict.
      • Smith and Sturges [June 1969] note in their study of the San Francisco drug scene that freak means "anyone addicted to drugs."[1969, Paul A. Eschholz, “Freak compounds for "argot freaks"”, in American Speech, volume 44, number 4, →DOI, pages 306–307
  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.
    • Anyone […] who seems "hung up" on some idea, activity or interactional disposition, might be called a "freak."[1968, Fred Davis with Laura Munoz, “Heads and freaks: patterns and meanings of drug use among hippies”, in Journal of Health and Social Behavior, volume 9, number 2, →DOI, pages 156–164
  5. (endearing, informal, sometimes) A very sexually perverse individual.
    • She's a freak in the sheets!
    • These determined souls [foot fetishists] are but the latest in a long line of foot freaks who trace their kinky lineage to ancient China, particularly the Song dynasty, which ruled until the thirteenth century when some other dynasty took over.2005, Annabelle du Fouet, “The murky world from whence it all came” (chapter 2), in Weather Balloons Make Rotten Sex Toys, Ellora's Cave, →ISBN, pages 38–39
  6. (African-American Vernacular) A wild dance.
    • Get your freak on.
  7. (dated) A sudden change of mind.
    • And then, with heart more hard than stone, ¶ He pick'd my marrow from the bone. ¶ To vex me more, he took a freak ¶ To slit my tongue and make me speak: ¶ But, that which wonderful appears, ¶ I speak to eyes, and not to ears.1724, Jonathan Swift, On a Pen
    • It would be a great comfort to Mr. Weston, as he grew older—and even Mr. Weston might be growing older ten years hence—to have his fireside enlivened by the sports and the nonsense, the freaks and the fancies of a child never banished from home;1815, Jane Austen, chapter 17, in Emma, volume III

Verb

freak (third-person singular simple present freaks, present participle freaking, simple past and past participle freaked)

  1. (intransitive, slang) To react extremely or irrationally, usually under distress or discomposure.
    • When the owner found a bunch of beatniks in there, he freaked, but that was later.1968, Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →OCLC, page 270
    • But after one night turned into five days, I was freaking out. I missed him.1994, James Earl Hardy, B-Boy Blues: A Seriously Sexy, Fiercely Funny, Black-On-Black Love Story, Alyson Publishing, page 107
  2. (ambitransitive, slang) 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.

Adjective

freak (not comparable)

  1. Strange, weird, unexpected.
    • a freak genius
    • freak accident
    Synonyms:
    freakish, aberrant, abnormal, alien, anomalous, as queer as Dick's hatband, bizarre, booky, curious, deviant

Noun (2)

freak (plural freaks)

  1. (dated) A spot or streak of colour.
    Synonyms:
    superciliary, vein

Noun (3)

freak (plural freaks)

  1. A man, particularly a bold, strong, vigorous man.
  2. (Scotland, UK, dialectal) A fellow; a petulant young man.

Also used as

freak is also the euphemistic form of fuck.

freak is also the alternative spelling of freck.

freak meaning in Indonesian

freak in Indonesian

oddball, especially in physiology
miring

Examples of freak in a sentence

  • Buck’s door vermilion, in which freak he was caught by the proctors …1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 19, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I...
  • And my own answer to this is that it is a freak.1907, Jack London, Before Adam, page 8:
  • There may be good points about a freak reel, but because it is a freak it will stand little show of even a fair try-out1920, Onnie Warren Smith, Casting tackle and methods, page 67:
  • It is a freak that people talk about when they see it.1938, Marian E. Baer, The wonders of water:

All 40 example sentences with freak

Synonyms of freak

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of freak

Forms of freak

Noun
pluralfreaks
alternative Scotlandfreik
alternative Scotlandfreke
alternative Scotlandfrick
alternative form (obsolete)freake
Verb
third-person singular presentfreaks
present participlefreaking
past participlefreaked
pastfreaked

Plural of freak: freaks

Origin of freak

First attested in 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 3). Compare Old High German freh (“eager”), Old English frēcne (“dangerous”). For the meaning development compare Russian заско́к (zaskók) akin to ско́к (skók), скака́ть (skakátʹ).

The verb is a variant of freck. The noun is derived from the verb.

From Middle English freke, freike (“a bold man, warrior, man, creature”), from Old English freca (“a bold man, warrior, hero”), from Proto-Germanic *frekô (“an active or eager man, warrior, wolf”), from *frekaz (“active, bold, desirous, greedy”), from Proto-Indo-European *pereg-, *spereg- (“to shrug, be quick, twitch, splash, blast”). Cognate with Old Norse freki (“greedy or avaricious one, a wolf”), Old High German freh (“eager”), German frech, Old English frēcne (“dangerous, daring, courageous, bold”).

Words formed from freak

Phrases with freak

2 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with freak

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about freak

What does freak mean?
Freak means someone or something that is markedly unusual or unpredictable.
What is freak in Indonesian?
Freak in Indonesian is miring. See Freak meaning in Indonesian.
How do you use freak in a sentence?
Buck’s door vermilion, in which freak he was caught by the proctors …
What part of speech is freak?
Freak can be a noun, a verb or an adjective.
How do you pronounce freak?
Freak is pronounced /fɹiːk/.
What is the plural of freak?
The plural of freak is freaks.

Words near freak in the dictionary

  1. FRCSCs
  2. FRCSs
  3. FRCVS
  4. frd
  5. FRE
  6. freak
  7. freak accident
  8. freak accidents
  9. freak flag
  10. freak flags
  11. freak folk

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: freak (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-freak.wav.

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