freshman

[ fresh-muhn ]

noun

, plural fresh·men.

1. a student in the first year of the course at a university, college, or high school.
2. a novice; beginner.

adjective

1. of, relating to, or characteristic of a freshman:

   to outgrow one's freshman attitudes.

2. lacking seniority or experience; junior:

   a freshman senator.

3. required of or suitable for freshmen:

   freshman courses.

4. initial; first:

   This is my freshman year with the company.

Gender Note

See -man.

Other Words From

• freshman·ship noun
• pre·freshman noun plural prefreshmen
• sub·freshman noun plural subfreshmen

Word History and Origins

Origin of freshman¹

First recorded in 1540–50; fresh + -man

Example Sentences

There’s really no reason to call a freshman senator who had just been sworn in weeks earlier and has no real legislative heft if your intent is to talk about the riot.

From Washington Post

Let’s say a child of mine goes off to college, they’re a freshman, and I want to know how they’re doing, like really how they’re doing — emotionally, academically, socially.

From Freakonomics

A freshman representative with little apparent appetite for policy or coalition-building, Greene wasn’t likely to wield much legislative power in the House.

From TechCrunch

Mendelsohn is a classics professor at Bard College in New York, and when the book opens, his 81-year-old dad, Jay, has just decided to audit his freshman course on The Odyssey.

From Outside Online

In the statement on Greene, first reported by the Hill, McConnell did not mention the freshman lawmaker by name but listed a series of actions that describe her pattern of inflammatory behavior.

From Washington Post

But the show is inoffensively good, which is high praise in a pretty terrible year for freshman TV series.

From The Daily Beast

“There was a lot of stuff that I had never really thought about before,” freshman Thomas Long said.

From The Daily Beast

More than 40 percent of incoming freshman said that a campus visit and social activities affected their choice.

From The Daily Beast

Despite performing in a respectable amount of sketches for a SNL freshman throughout the season, her contract was not renewed.

From The Daily Beast

“Ted Cruz, Team Player” is a twist few saw coming from the freshman who has made too many enemies to count in Washington.

From The Daily Beast

The folks that know it all are the squabs, chuckled Bobby, referring to the freshman class.

From Project Gutenberg

When I was a freshman, there entered a woman over fifty, with perfectly white hair.

From Project Gutenberg

It was, perhaps, the sympathy in her tone that urged the instructor to confide her trouble to a strange girl—a freshman, at that!

From Project Gutenberg

The other Briarwood girls were the only members of the freshman class Ruth was likely to be intimate with for some days.

From Project Gutenberg

But for a freshman to show sufficient athletic training to make any of the first teams, would almost seem impossible.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• novice
• rookie
• undergraduate