freakish

freakish

English

WOTD – 8 September 2015

Etymology

freak +‎ -ish

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈfɹiːkɪʃ/

• Audio (AU)

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Adjective

freakish (comparative more freakish, superlative most freakish)

1. Resembling a freak.
2. Strange, unusual, abnormal or bizarre.
   • 1926, John Merton Aldrich, “Notes on Muscoid Flies with Retracted Hind Crossvein, with Key and Several New Genera and Species”, in Transactions of the American Entomological Society, volume 52, number 1, JSTOR 25077148, pages 7-28:

     In all this series there is an almost freakish tendency toward the development of characters usually regarded as generic, as a result of which most of the genera have only one known species each.

   • 2013 September 22, Phil McNulty, “Man City 4–1 Man Utd”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name)‎, BBC Sport, archived from the original on 22 October 2014:

     This was arguably a more emphatic win than that Old Trafford thrashing, without the freakish element and simply the result of City's vast superiority in all areas.

3. Capricious, unpredictable.

Derived terms

• freakishly
• freakishness

 

Related terms

• freaky

Translations

resembling a freak

Dutch: buitenissig (nl) Finnish: kummallinen (fi) German: freakig Italian: bizzarro (it) Swedish: bisarr (sv)

strange, unusual

Bulgarian: странен (bg) (stranen), необичаен (bg) (neobičaen) Finnish: kummallinen (fi) German: freakig Hungarian: bizarr (hu), furcsa (hu), groteszk (hu), különös (hu) Swedish: underlig (sv)

capricious or unpredictable — see capricious,‎ unpredictable