freak out
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: 4.08 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
1
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To react with extreme anger or fear, to the extent that one loses one's composure or behaves irrationally.
Informal; Intransitive verb
verb
To adopt an unconventional (especially countercultural) persona or appearance.
Informal; Intransitive verb
Example Sentences
- "When Peter saw the nail poking up through his foot, he freaked out and started hyperventilating."
- "Jimmy'll come in off the road, you won't be there, he'll freak out and call you a hundred thousand times..."
- "Don't take off your shirt when working behind the counter. You'll freak the customers out."
- "Even the blithely unselfconscious Homer is more than a little freaked out by West’s private reverie, and encourages his spawn to move slowly away without making eye contact with the crazy man."
- "On a personal level, Freaking Out is a process whereby an individual casts off outmoded and restricting standards of thinking, dress, and social etiquette in order to express CREATIVELY his relationship to his immediate environment and the social structure as a whole."
- "Formed in the heart of the British Invasion in 1964 as the Nevadas, the Jacks decided to freak out and grow their hair long."
Etymology
From freak + out. Countercultural slang, originally referring to a positive reaction or experience from the use of a psychotropic, usually a hallucinogenic or psychedelic drug. First use appears c. 1966 in several newspapers, particularly in the Independent (Long Beach, California).