fresh

UK/fɹɛʃ/US/fɹɛʃ/

adjectiveA26 meanings Very common — you will meet it every day · #700 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: fresher, freshest

Fresh means just made, just picked, just caught — nothing has had time to go old. Bread still warm from the oven, a tomato off the plant, fish that was in the sea this morning.

Fresh also means not frozen, not tinned and not dried: fresh peas sit in one part of the shop, frozen peas in another. It means new and extra as well — a fresh start, fresh evidence, a fresh sheet of paper — with no food in sight. Fresh air is clean air, fresh water is water without salt, and a fresh wind is a cold one that makes your eyes water. The adverb is freshly and it goes in front of a past participle: freshly baked, freshly cut, freshly painted. If somebody tells you not to get fresh with them, they mean you are being cheeky, and that use is informal and old-fashioned.

Definitions of fresh

1adjectivefreshMade, picked or caught a very short time ago.A2~23%
“The bread is fresh — it came out of the oven an hour ago.”
- Said"Is the fish fresh? The chicken looks fresher, if I'm honest."
- WrittenThe rolls were still fresh at noon, and by evening you could have built with them.
- UsedBuy fresh herbs the day you use them; they wilt within hours.
- ContrastFresh, not old. Old bread is hard as a brick; fresh bread gives under your thumb. old →
- Not thisCold is not fresh. Meat from the freezer is cold; meat from the market this morning is fresh.
Patternfresh + noun (bread, fish, air) · fresh from / out of + place · freshly baked / cut · freshness
2adjectivefrozenNot frozen, tinned or dried.A2~2%
“She only buys fresh fish on market days.”
3adjectivenewNew, and taking the place of what came before.A2~59%
“Give me a fresh sheet of paper and I will start again.”
synonyms: new, further
4adjectivewaterOf water: without salt.B1~12%
“Salmon are born in fresh water and grow up in the sea.”
5adjectiveairOf air or weather: cool and clean.A2~2%
“He opened the window for some fresh air.”
6adjectiveboldToo bold or cheeky with someone.C1~2%
“Don't get fresh with your grandmother.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 8 sentences found in the wild and placed 8 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Remember it

FRESH → a fish still jumping this morning

The fish on the table was jumping in the sea this morning, and the bread was made an hour ago: everything is fresh.

Where it comes from

Old English had fersċ — fresh, pure, sweet — from Proto-Germanic *friskaz and, behind that, Proto-Indo-European *preysk-. The relatives are everywhere: German frisch, Dutch vers, Swedish frisk, Icelandic ferskur, French frais. Lithuanian kept the strangest cousin, prėskas, which means unflavoured and tasteless — fresh food seen from the other side.

Middle English
fressh
English, today
fresh

From Middle English fressh. From Middle English fressh, from Old English fersċ (“fresh, pure, sweet”), from Proto-West Germanic frisk (“fresh”), from Proto-Germanic friskaz (“fresh”), from Proto-Indo-European preysk- (“fresh”). The verb is from Middle English freshen (“to freshen”), from the adjective. Cognate with Scots fresch (“fresh”), West Frisian farsk (“fresh”), Dutch vers (“fresh”), wa frexh (“fresh”), German frisch (“fresh”), French frais (“fresh”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk frisk (“fresh”), Swedish frisk (“well, fresh”), Icelandic ferskur (“fresh”), Lithuanian prėskas (“unflavoured, tasteless, fresh”), Russian пре́сный (“sweet, fresh, unleavened, tasteless”). a doublet of fresco and frisk.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in In the Kitchen, Smell & Taste

Practise this word

fresh in the wild

Having advanced 9 mi, the Allies were halted 7 mi north of Falaise and forced to prepare a fresh attack.
Operation Totalize
Prussia and Russia mobilized for a fresh campaign with France, massing troops in Saxony.
War of the Fourth Coalition
At this camp fresh volunteers received quick training before heading off to join the Union Army.
Camp Randall
The camp hospital was established on the ground floor of the Waldschmidt barn, after horses were liveried elsewhere, the manure removed, and fresh straw laid down.
Camp Dennison
The Khrushchev Thaw brought some fresh wind to literature and poetry became a mass cultural phenomenon.
Russian literature

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

Definitions of fresh

1adjectivefreshMade, picked or caught a very short time ago.A2~23%

“The bread is fresh — it came out of the oven an hour ago.”

Said"Is the fish fresh? The chicken looks fresher, if I'm honest."
WrittenThe rolls were still fresh at noon, and by evening you could have built with them.
UsedBuy fresh herbs the day you use them; they wilt within hours.
ContrastFresh, not old. Old bread is hard as a brick; fresh bread gives under your thumb. old →
Not thisCold is not fresh. Meat from the freezer is cold; meat from the market this morning is fresh.

Patternfresh + noun (bread, fish, air) · fresh from / out of + place · freshly baked / cut · freshness

2adjectivefrozenNot frozen, tinned or dried.A2~2%

“She only buys fresh fish on market days.”

3adjectivenewNew, and taking the place of what came before.A2~59%

“Give me a fresh sheet of paper and I will start again.”

synonyms: new, further

4adjectivewaterOf water: without salt.B1~12%

“Salmon are born in fresh water and grow up in the sea.”

5adjectiveairOf air or weather: cool and clean.A2~2%

“He opened the window for some fresh air.”

6adjectiveboldToo bold or cheeky with someone.C1~2%

“Don't get fresh with your grandmother.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 8 sentences found in the wild and placed 8 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.