Word.ws English Dictionary

freshmanitis

freshmanitis noun: a tendency of (mostly college) freshmen to be overwhelmed by the amount of work as well as make unwise choices.

Noun

freshmanitis (uncountable)

  1. (US, rare) A tendency of (mostly college) freshmen to be overwhelmed by the amount of work as well as make unwise choices.
    • Freshmanitis is justifying poor decisions because you’re a Freshman. It’s like “YOLO,” but instead you say, “I’m a freshman – I didn’t know better.”2015 April 17, Lisa Mengotto, “Freshmanitis”, in The Stute
    • Since one of the common psychological symptoms of freshmanitis is increased appetite, it is believed that giving students the option to eat as much as they want will often lead to Freshman 15.2015 July 9, Erik Chiodo, “A treatment for freshmanitis: Some tips for freshman year”, in Campus Times

Origin of freshmanitis

From freshman + -itis, on the pattern of senioritis.

Questions about freshmanitis

What does freshmanitis mean?
Freshmanitis means a tendency of (mostly college) freshmen to be overwhelmed by the amount of work as well as make unwise choices.
What part of speech is freshmanitis?
Freshmanitis is a noun.

Words near freshmanitis in the dictionary

  1. Freshman 15
  2. freshman fifteen
  3. freshman's nerve
  4. freshmanhood
  5. freshmanic
  6. freshmanitis
  7. freshmanly
  8. freshmanship
  9. freshmen
  10. freshmint
  11. freshness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: freshmanitis (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-freshmanitis.wav.

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