Freak

/fɹiːk/ · noun

Meaning

(dated outside certain expressions) Someone or something that is markedly unusual or unpredictable..

Definitions by Sense

1. (dated outside certain expressions) Someone or something that is markedly unusual or unpredictable.
2. A hippie.
3. A drug addict.
4. (slang, chiefly derogatory) 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.
5. (bodybuilding) A person whose physique has grown far beyond the normal limits of muscular development; often a bodybuilder weighing more than 260 pounds (120 kg).
6. An enthusiast, or person who has an obsession with, or extreme knowledge of, something.
7. (informal, sometimes endearing) A very sexually perverse individual.
8. (African-American Vernacular) A wild dance.

Example Sentences

The two-headed calf was a freak.

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

[H]aving a dinner-party at his rooms to entertain some friends from London, nothing would satisfy Mr. Foker but painting Mr. Buck’s door vermilion, in which freak he was caught by the proctors …

[A policeman] saw [Harriet Robinson] in a pair of corduroy trousers, an old gray jacket, and without a hat, singing an Irish song...when [he] asked her what she meant by it, she said that they were only having a lark, and that the clothes she had on belonged to her "old man."—A Mrs Scanlan, called for the defendant, described her freak as "a little bit of joviality."

And I may answer with another question. Why is a two-headed calf? And my own answer to this is that it is a freak.

There may be good points about a freak reel, but because it is a freak it will stand little show of even a fair try-out

It is a freak that people talk about when they see it. Not everyone calls it by the right name, and few people know how it gets to be what it is. This freak is hail.

When long-haired, outlandishly dressed, drug-using hippies pilgrimaged to Haight-Ashbury in the early 1960s, they were quickly dubbed freaks; the pejorative appellation was both obvious and intended. It was not long before freak had become practically synonymous with hippie. It seems, however, that with the acceptance of long hair, the appearance and popularity of some rather bizarre fashions, and the emphasis placed upon "doing one's own thing," freak is no longer burdened with all of its former derogatory associations. Instead […] the word is beginning to acquire a quality which is favorable, glamorous, and somehow even admirable.

Synonyms for freak

Antonyms for freak

Related Words

Word Forms

• freaks
• freake
• freik
• freke
• frick
• freaking
• freaked

Usage Notes

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