Frank

How to spell frank

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce frank

What does frank mean?

1. adjectiveOpen and honest in speech, saying plainly what one thinks even when it is uncomfortable.
2. verbTo mark a letter or parcel so that it can be sent without the sender paying postage.

Frank in a sentence

• adjective

  Her manager gave a frank assessment of the failing project.

• verb

  Officials are permitted to frank their official correspondence.

• adjective

  To be frank, the proposal needs a great deal more work.

• verb

  The office uses a machine to frank every outgoing envelope.

Where does frank come from?

Language of origin: French

The word comes from the Frankish people, the Germanic tribe whose name was carried into Latin as Francus and then into Old French as franc, meaning 'free'. The link is historical: in early medieval Gaul, only the Franks held full freedom and civic status, so 'frank' came to mean 'free' in the broader sense of being unrestricted. English borrowed it around the 1300s, first in the sense of 'free' or 'liberal', and the meaning shifted toward 'speaking freely, without concealment' by the 1500s. The same root survives in the place name France and in 'franchise', which originally meant a granted freedom or privilege. The later postal sense, marking a letter so it travels free of charge, also traces straight back to that core idea of 'free'.

How the word is built

• frank (from Old French franc: free, of the Franks); a single root word with no affixes

Words that sound like frank

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• franc: A unit of currency formerly used in France and Belgium and still used in Switzerland and several other countries.