Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Strange; foreign.
  • Not akin; unrelated.
  • Strange; singular; queer.
  • Wild; undomesticated.
  • noun A stranger; a foreigner or an alien.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Old Eng. & Scot. Strange; foreign.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Strange; foreign; alien; outlandish; far off or away; distant.
  • adjective Not akin; unrelated.
  • adjective Out of the ordinary; unusual; unwonted.
  • adjective Strange; weird; outlandish; singular; odd; queer.
  • adjective archaic or obsolete Wild; untamed.
  • noun stranger; guest
  • noun archaic or obsolete an enmity

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English fremede ("strange, foreign"), from Old English fremde, fremede, fremeþe ("foreign, strange"), from Proto-Germanic *framaþiz (“foreign, not one's own”), from Proto-Indo-European *perəm-, *prom- (“forth, forward”), from *por- (“forward, through”). Cognate with Scots fremd ("fremd"), West Frisian frjemd ("strange, fremd"), Dutch vreemd ("strange, exotic"), German fremd ("strange, foreign"), Swedish främmande ("foreign, outlandish, strange"). More at from.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word fremd.

Examples

  • Kirsteen had known vaguely that her sister was supposed to be in Glasgow, which was something like an aggravation of her offence: for to live among what Miss Eelen called the fremd in a large town was the sort of unprincipled preference of evil to good which was to be expected from a girl who had married beneath her; but to find herself confronted with Anne was a contingency which had never occurred to her.

    Kirsteen: The Story of a Scotch Family Seventy Years Ago Margaret 1891

  • Ye might hae heard him a mile down the wind — He routed like a cow in a fremd loaning.

    Old Mortality 2004

  • Ger. fremd, so that opposite terms, which we find regularly contrasted in Mid.

    The Romance of Names Ernest Weekley 1909

  • "Twenty-three years," he bellowed at the top of his voice, for he saw that I was fremd, and wished to make himself clear.

    Home Life in Germany Alfred Sidgwick 1894

  • But to cut off a daughter – as if she were a fremd person, never to see her or name her name, oh, that's hard, hard!

    Kirsteen: The Story of a Scotch Family Seventy Years Ago Margaret 1891

  • [38 - †] “Dass der Gott Tepeyollotl im Zapotekenlande und weiter südwärts seine Wurzeln hat, und dem eigentlichen Aztekischen Olymp fremd ist, darüber kann kein Zweifel mehr obwalten.”

    Nagualism A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History Daniel Garrison Brinton 1868

  • Ferre and fremd bestad: one from afar and among strangers.

    A Bundle of Ballads Henry Morley 1858

  • Leastways he'll be gone to see feyther, and he'll need comfort most on all, in a fremd place -- in Bridewell -- and niver a morsel of victual or a piece o 'money.'

    Sylvia's Lovers — Complete Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell 1837

  • Leastways he'll be gone to see feyther, and he'll need comfort most on all, in a fremd place -- in Bridewell -- and niver a morsel of victual or a piece o 'money.'

    Sylvia's Lovers — Volume 2 Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell 1837

  • Heil dem Brittischen Volke, wenn ihm das Deutsche nicht fremd ist!

    Records of Woman, With Other Poems 1828

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • This word was played against me in Scrabble on the first turn! Hitting the double-letter bonus with the 'F' and getting the double-word at the board's center, my opponent scored 30 points. I was familiar with the word in German from having heard it in Cabaret alongside French and English approximations (etranger and stranger) in the opening song, but I am dismayed to find that it is Scrabble-legitimate.

    May 7, 2012