freckle
/ˈfɹɛk(ə)l/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: 2.36 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A small sweet consisting of a flattish mound of chocolate covered in hundreds and thousands.
Australian usage
Example Sentences
- "Steve has brown hair, blue eyes, and freckles on his cheeks and nose."
- "The rabbits came out from their burrows to peep, / The wind whispered, "Hush! little Jane's gone to sleep!" / And the spiders came spinning a curtain of lace, / Lest the sun should make freckles on Jane's pretty face."
- "Nurse Cramer had a cute nose and a radiant, blooming complexion dotted with fetching sprays of adorable freckles that Yossarian detested."
Etymology
The noun is derived from Late Middle English fracle, frekel, frekle (“freckle; pimple; fleck of colour in a stone”), a variant of frakne, freken (“freckle; other skin blemish”) (whence frecken (“(obsolete except UK, dialectal) freckle”)), from Old Norse freknur pl (compare Faroese frøknur, Danish fregner, Swedish fräknar), an s-less variant of Proto-Germanic *sprekalą (“freckle”) (compare Middle High German spreckel, dialectal Norwegian sprekla), from Proto-Indo-European *sp(h)er(e)g-, *(s)pregʰ- (“to sprinkle, strew”). Doublet of spark, sprack, and spry. The verb is derived from the noun. cognates * Albanian fruth (“measles”) * Old English sprecel
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *(s)pregʰ-, fracle, freknur, *sprekalą
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈfɹɛk(ə)l/
- British English: /ˈfɹɛkl̩/