Freshman
nounA student in their first year at a college, university, or American high school.
How to spell freshman
8 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce freshman
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does freshman mean?
- nounA student in their first year at a college, university, or American high school.
Freshman in a sentence
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Every freshman on campus received a printed map of the lecture halls.
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As a freshman, she struggled to balance late-night study with early classes.
Where does freshman come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
Freshman is a compound formed in English from two native Germanic words: 'fresh', from Old English fersc meaning 'unsalted, pure, new', and 'man', from Old English mann meaning 'a person'. When the two were joined in the 1550s, the literal idea was a 'new person', someone freshly arrived. The word was quickly adopted by universities to label a student in the first year of study, the newest member of the academic community. The 'fresh' element is the same one that survives in 'freshwater' and 'refresh', and it carries the sense of something newly come or just begun. Because both halves are spelled exactly as the familiar everyday words 'fresh' and 'man', the compound holds few surprises, though the unstressed second syllable can tempt writers toward the wrong vowel.
How the word is built
- fresh (new, recent)
- man (person)
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