freak
freak Lexical Profile
freak Game Scores & Validity
• adjective
Occurred or produced in a sudden, highly unusual, and unexpected manner (used strictly before a noun).
"The mountain pass was closed overnight due to a freak snowstorm in late May."
• noun
A person, animal, or plant with an unusual physical abnormality, or a person perceived as strange or unconventional in appearance or behavior (often derogatory).
"The novel explores the struggles of an outcast who is treated like a freak by the small-town residents."
A person who is obsessively enthusiastic about a specified activity, interest, or habit (informal).
"My brother is a total fitness freak who wakes up at dawn every day to run ten miles."
A sudden, arbitrary, and unexpected whim or turn of events.
"By some strange freak of fate, the two childhood friends boarded the exact same flight in Tokyo."
• verb
To react or cause someone to react with extreme fear, panic, shock, or agitation (informal, often used with 'out').
"Please do not freak when you see the repair estimate for the car."
To fleck or streak casually with spots or patches of color (archaic or poetic).
"In the poem, Milton describes the pansy freaked with jet across its petals."
Word Nuance & Usage
When applied to people with physical differences, 'freak' is strongly derogatory and offensive, though in casual compounding (such as 'health freak' or 'neat freak') it simply denotes an obsessive enthusiast.
• Rhymes for freak
Word Origin & Etymology
First recorded in the mid-16th century meaning a 'sudden capricious turn of mind' or 'whim,' probably from a dialectal survival of Old English frician ('to dance' or 'move briskly'). The sense of a biological anomaly or unusual phenomenon developed in the 18th century from the phrase 'freak of nature.'