Word.ws English Dictionary

freshers' flu

freshers' flu noun: a cold or similar illness contracted by new students at a university, caused by gathering people (and the diseases they carry) from a wide variety of places in a confined area, allowing the diseases to spread to those without immunity.

Noun

freshers' flu (uncountable)

  1. (UK, informal) A cold or similar illness contracted by new students at a university, caused by gathering people (and the diseases they carry) from a wide variety of places in a confined area, allowing the diseases to spread to those without immunity.

Origin of freshers' flu

From fresher (“a new student”) and flu (“disease”), an abbreviation of influenza.

Questions about freshers' flu

What does freshers' flu mean?
Freshers' flu means a cold or similar illness contracted by new students at a university, caused by gathering people (and the diseases they carry) from a wide variety of places in a confined area, allowing the diseases to spread to those without immunity.
What part of speech is freshers' flu?
Freshers' flu is a noun.

Words near freshers' flu in the dictionary

  1. freshens
  2. freshens up
  3. fresher
  4. fresherdom
  5. freshers
  6. freshers' flu
  7. freshers' week
  8. freshers' weeks
  9. freshes
  10. freshes up
  11. freshest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: freshers' flu (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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