freshman

1. 1.

   used of a person in the first year of an experience (especially in United States high school or college)

   “a freshman senator”

   “freshman year in high school or college”

   Synonymsfirst-year

   Similarfirst

   United States

Other forms of freshman

plural

freshmans·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about freshman

What does freshman mean?

freshman means "a first-year undergraduate". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in freshman?

freshman has 2 syllables: fresh-man. The stress falls on "fresh". In IPA it is /ˈfɹɛʃmən/.

What is another word for freshman?

Close synonyms include fresher, newcomer, fledgling, fledgeling, starter. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is freshman a common word?

freshman is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.