Other forms: freaks
A freak is something wildly abnormal, or a keen enthusiast. A freak accident, a freak wave, a fitness freak.
As a modifier it means a one-off that nobody could have predicted: a freak storm, a freak result. Applied to a person it was cruel — freak shows displayed people with disabilities for money — and the word is avoided in that sense now. A fitness freak is affectionate. Note freak out, meaning to panic.
1nounfreakSomething wildly abnormal.
“A freak storm destroyed the crops just before the harvest.”
2nounkeenA keen enthusiast.
“My uncle is a film freak who has seen every Hitchcock movie at least twice.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
freak is an abnormality, or an enthusiast.
Freak appears in the 1560s meaning a whim or sudden change of mind, and its origin is unknown. The sense of an abnormal thing came later.
Old English
frīcian
Middle English
friken
English, today
freak
Built from
From Middle English friken, from Old English frīcian. 1567. The sense "sudden change of mind, a whim" is of unknown 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 a man). Compare Old High German freh (“eager”), Old English frēcne (“dangerous”). For the meaning development compare заско́к akin to ско́к, скака́ть.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA