Word.ws English Dictionary

freshman fifteen

freshman fifteen noun: the amount of body weight (thought to be 15 pounds) gained by a student during their first year of college.

Noun

freshman fifteen

  1. (Canada, US, colloquial) The amount of body weight (thought to be 15 pounds) gained by a student during their first year of college.
    • I gained the dreaded "freshman fifteen," whereas Ophi became unnaturally thin from eating too little.1997, Tali Edut, with Dyann Logwood and Ophira Edut, “HUES Magazine: The Making of a Movement”, in Leslie Heywood, Jennifer Drake, editors, Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism...
    • Having gained the regulation freshman fifteen meant that my skirt that day fit.1999 August 4, Alice Sebold, Lucky, New York: Scribner, →ISBN, →OL, page 37
    Synonyms:
    fresher five, fresher spread

Synonyms of freshman fifteen

  • fresher five
  • fresher spread

Forms of freshman fifteen

alternative formfreshman 15

Origin of freshman fifteen

From freshman + fifteen.

Questions about freshman fifteen

What does freshman fifteen mean?
Freshman fifteen means the amount of body weight (thought to be 15 pounds) gained by a student during their first year of college.
What part of speech is freshman fifteen?
Freshman fifteen is a noun.

Words near freshman fifteen in the dictionary

  1. freshling
  2. freshlings
  3. freshly
  4. freshman
  5. Freshman 15
  6. freshman fifteen
  7. freshman's nerve
  8. freshmanhood
  9. freshmanic
  10. freshmanitis
  11. freshmanly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: freshman fifteen (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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