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
-
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:
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
Watching from the Mall, Grace Gothard, from Mitcham, made her Union Jack dress draped with the Ghanian flag while Satvinder Cubb, from Chingford made a frock made from two "Lest we forget" scarves.
From BBC ● May 5, 2025
For Elsbeth’s first time at the opera, a Carolina Herrera rose-print frock ticked the “cacophony of colors and patterns” box but was still appropriate for the culturally rich setting.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 7, 2024
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
She played with her food and spilled milk on her little frock.
From "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers
One reason he endures is because a lot of the society we see is Grace Kelly in beautiful frocks and Cary Grant in gorgeous suits in cocktail world drawing rooms.
From Salon ● Oct. 24, 2024
Emma Stone has opted for stunning, form-fitting frocks with plenty of embellishment.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 10, 2024
Aksu used lots of lace, crochet, ruffles and intricate embellishments on suits and frocks.
From Reuters ● Sep. 15, 2023
Jillian Anne Abaya, though always beautifully costumed in flirty white frocks, doesn’t quite offer the flighty, effervescent, pre-manic-pixie-dream-girl quality that Daisy requires, and Shahzeb Hussain has the bravado but not the menace of Tom.
From New York Times ● Jun. 29, 2023
The people, walking round the ground in their best frocks, from Grand Stand to Refreshment Tent, must have found the fighting very like the game.
From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White
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
In one book we see quaintly frocked and pantaletted girls and much buttoned boys in Sunday-school.
From Forgotten Books of the American Nursery A History of the Development of the American Story-Book by Rosalie Vrylina Halsey
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
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