Word.ws English Dictionary

freeter

freeter noun: in Japan, a young person (typically between the ages of 15-34) who lacks full-time employment (excluding housewives and students), especially through lack of interest in a career.

Noun

freeter (plural freeters)

  1. In Japan, a young person (typically between the ages of 15-34) who lacks full-time employment (excluding housewives and students), especially through lack of interest in a career.
    • The average freeter lives at home, earns about $1,000 a month, and stays in a job about nine months, according to surveys conducted by the Recruit Corporation, Japan's largest job placement company. Recruit estimates that 3.4 million Japanese, aged 19 to 30, are freeters, working part time or at...2001 October 16, James Brooke, “Young Japanese Breaking Old Salaryman's Bonds”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

Forms of freeter

pluralfreeters

Origin of freeter

Borrowed from Japanese フリーター (furītā), possibly from English free and German Arbeiter (“labourer”).

Questions about freeter

What does freeter mean?
Freeter means in Japan, a young person (typically between the ages of 15-34) who lacks full-time employment (excluding housewives and students), especially through lack of interest in a career.
What part of speech is freeter?
Freeter is a noun.
What is the plural of freeter?
The plural of freeter is freeters.

Words near freeter in the dictionary

  1. freetail
  2. freetails
  3. freetard
  4. freetards
  5. freetekno
  6. freeter
  7. freeters
  8. freeth
  9. freethinker
  10. freethinkers
  11. freethinking

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: freeter (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: “freeter.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/freeter. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.