freak

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   lose one's nerve, often used in the phrase "freak out"

   When they saw the accident, they freaked out.

2. 2
   noun

   Someone or something that is markedly unusual or unpredictable.

   The two-headed calf was a freak.

3. 3
   noun

   A hippie.

   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.

4. 4
   noun

   A drug addict.

   Smith and Sturges [June 1969] note in their study of the San Francisco drug scene that freak means "anyone addicted to drugs."

5. 5
   noun

   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.

   St. Bart’s was not particularly pleased either with Lake’s methods or with their results, but kept him on because it was fashionable to have at least one distinguished freak on the staff.

6. 6
   noun

   An enthusiast, or person who has an obsession with, or extreme knowledge of, something.

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

7. 7
   noun

   A very sexually perverse individual.

   She's a freak in the sheets!

8. 8
   noun

   A wild dance.

   Get your freak on.

Etymology

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 frician (“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…