frock
Americannoun
-
a gown or dress worn by a girl or woman.
-
a loose outer garment worn by peasants and workers; smock.
-
a coarse outer garment with large sleeves, worn by monks.
verb (used with object)
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frocks,
present (3rd person singular)
-
frocked,
past participle, past
-
frocking
present participle
-
to provide with, or clothe in, a frock.
-
to invest with priestly or clerical office.
noun
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a girl's or woman's dress
-
a loose garment of several types, such as a peasant's smock
-
a coarse wide-sleeved outer garment worn by members of some religious orders
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
frocksimple
-
frockssimple
-
have frockedperfect
-
has frockedperfect
-
am frockingprogressive
-
are frockingprogressive
-
is frockingprogressive
-
have been frockingperfect progressive
-
has been frockingperfect progressive
Past
-
frockedsimple
-
had frockedperfect
-
was frockingprogressive
-
were frockingprogressive
-
had been frockingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of frock
1300–50; Middle English froke < Old French froc < Frankish; compare Old Saxon, Old High German hroc coat
Explanation
Use the noun frock as an old-fashioned way to say "dress." You might wear a new pink frock to your best friend's birthday party. Typically, girls and women wear frocks, especially to formal events like weddings and fancy parties. The word frock isn't as common today as it was in the past, though it's a great way to refer to a dress. You can also call a monk's loose, long-sleeved garment a frock. The word's origin is Germanic, and it comes directly from the French word froc, "a monk's habit."
Vocabulary lists containing frock
The Catcher in the Rye
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Bless Me, Ultima
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Amal Unbound
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Still, Ava opts for a charcoal-gray, strapless Alberta Ferretti frock to showcase her chameleonic style and capacity to surprise sartorially.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 4, 2026
After spotting the moss green, knee-length frock with matching bolero jacket in the window of her local J.J.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 14, 2025
Their bodies were their canvases, which they bedecked in feather boas, tutus, corsets, Victorian petticoats, Edwardian frock coats, wigs, wings, headdresses, ribbons, sequins, rhinestones, satin, face paint and an abundance of glitter.
From New York Times ● Apr. 12, 2024
He was popularized by 1980s pop star Adam Ant, who donned a frock coat and tricorn hat and had a hit with Turpin’s famous slogan, “Stand and Deliver.”
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 28, 2024
I hurried on my frock and a shawl; I withdrew the bolt and opened the door with a trembling hand.
From "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë
Emma Stone has opted for stunning, form-fitting frocks with plenty of embellishment.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 10, 2024
Unto her she gathers Instagram influencers decked out in Anthropologie-style frocks who rave about nonsensical treatments that Eva clearly made up.
From Salon ● Dec. 31, 2023
On TV, we had the White Heather Club - women in white frocks and tartan sashes dancing impossibly complicated reels and strathspeys; men in kilts playing accordions and singing kitsch songs about exile and nostalgia.
From BBC ● Feb. 25, 2023
Then came trouser suits and coats alongside sheer, and sometimes embroidered, frocks in lace, tulle and chiffon.
From Reuters ● Feb. 25, 2023
She would have Sophie to look over all her “toilettes,” as she called frocks; to furbish up any that were “passées,” and to air and arrange the new.
From "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë
Her majesty was frocked in a delicately flared dress of lime, lemon, purple silk — a spring- season Popsicle — which the 92-year-old monarch managed to pull off.
From Washington Post ● May 19, 2018
The Australian actress - who was up for an award for her work in Lion - frocked up in a green Gucci gown adorned with feathered parrot heads.
From BBC ● Jan. 30, 2017
Laura Ford's neatly frocked little girl paddling forlornly in her wellies has her head shrouded in a looming plaster cloud.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 20, 2010
Last week Tijuana was parading a newfound reputation as a respectable, commercially solid city, frocked out in its Sunday best for a three-week international trade show called Mexpo.
From Time Magazine Archive
Your holiness will breakfast with us, of course; and these two frocked gentlemen likewise.
From Westward Ho!, or, the voyages and adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the county of Devon, in the reign of her most glorious majesty Queen Elizabeth by Charles Kingsley
Many boys grew to manhood never wearing, except on Sundays, any kind of coat save a long, loose, shapeless jacket or smock of this striped frocking, known everywhere as a long-short.
From Home Life in Colonial Days by Alice Morse Earle
A universal stuff woven in New Hampshire by the Scotch-Irish linen-weavers who settled there, and who influenced husbandry and domestic manufactures and customs all around them, was what was known as striped frocking.
From Home Life in Colonial Days by Alice Morse Earle
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
