freakish

English

WOTD – 8 September 2015

Etymology

From freak +‎ -ish.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈfɹiːkɪʃ/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -iːkɪʃ

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, 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)‎^[1], 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