freak

CEFRC1

/fɹiːk/

noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    A person or thing considered unusually strange or extreme.

  2. 02

    noun

    Extra detail

    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.

Examples

  • I hate those spiders. They're always there to freak me out when I'm cleaning.

  • My mother would freak out if she knew about it.

At a glance

Sits at C1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1
Citations
5
Synonyms
5

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  1. Someone or something that is markedly unusual or unpredictable.

  2. A person whose physique has grown far beyond the normal limits of muscular development; often a bodybuilder weighing more than 260 pounds (120 kg).

  3. A hippie.

More examples

In context

  • Do circuses still have freak shows?

  • Bob's a real video-game freak. He owns every games console of the last ten years.

  • freak of nature, freak of the weather, freak of the imagination

Synonyms

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Nearby

Origin

noun

First appears c. 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 2). Compare Old High German freh (“eager”), Old English frēcne (“dangerous”). For the meaning development compare...