This week is Welcome Week at Bangor University when new students arrive for the first time, register, join clubs and societies, some of which they’ll actually go to, and so on. It’s also known as Freshers’ Week and the new students are known as freshers, though after this week, they’re generally known as first years.
I understand that in the USA a first year student at high school and college is known as freshman. Does this apply to female students as well? Is the plural freshmen used?
Freshman first appeared in writing in the 1550s meaning “newcomer or novice”, and was used to mean a first year student at university from the 1590s. The word freshwoman appeared in the 1620s. Related words include freshmanic, freshmanship, freshmanhood.
An alternative for freshman, underclassman, meaning “sophomore (second year) or freshman” first appeared in 1869 [source].
The word fresh comes from the Old English fersc (fresh, pure, sweet), from the Proto-Germanic *friskaz (fresh), from the Proto-Indo-European *preysk- (fresh) [source].
What are first year students called in other languages?
I can confirm that “freshman” is an extremely common term in the US for first-year students in high school and college. (More accurately, it is a term for students in 9th grade of high school, which runs to 12th grade in the US.) Most high schools now are four-year institutions (1st-5th is elementary school; 6th-8th is middle school, 9th-12th is high school). It was more common in the past to break this educational arc into two schools: 1st-7th was elementary school; 8th-12th was high school; in those environments, a first-year student (8th grader) was known as a “sub-freshman”.
And yes to both of your questions: A woman can be referred to as a “freshman”. And the plural “freshmen” is common and sounds natural.
I’ve never heard the term “freshwoman”. In the US, if we seek more inclusive language, we generally don’t establish a female equivalent; rather, we try to establish a gender-neutral umbrella term. The most common formation would be as “freshperson” — but I’ve never heard it. Personally, I use the term “first-year student” or just “first-year” to be inclusive — but most people don’t seem bothered by “freshman”. It does seem that there’s a trend (perhaps not deliberate, but useful) of referring to people less frequently as “freshmen” and more frequently as “members of the freshman class”
I infer that this term is not widely recognized in the UK, which surprised me. Are our other terms for progression through high school and college recognized there (“sophomore” = 2nd year; “junior” = 3rd year; “senior” = 4th year).
Worth noting is that the terms are applied to other progressions as well (e.g., “the freshman senator from Georgia”, “that TV series is in its sophomore year”).
The only thing I can add to Joe’s comments is that at the university I attended (in Southern California in the 1980’s) “freshman” was often shortened to “frosh”, which was indeterminate as to both gender and number. It could be used as “What do you know? You’re just a frosh” or “A bunch of frosh showed up at the dance”.
In my experience (in the Midwest and Northeastern US), what Joe and Jonathan said is true. A number of colleges in the Northeast are starting to use “First-year” officially as well, probably because “freshfolks” or “freshpeople” never really worked as gender-neutral terms. I’ve heard Frosh, which Jonathan mentioned. However, I’ve mostly heard it used in the term “pre-frosh” to refer to someone who’s still in high school but is either committed to a college or is taking classes there.
I went to a three-year high school in Illinois, where the majority of students spent one year at their local schools, and then transferred to the boarding school for their last three years. So the youngest people there were sophomores. Some people, however, started the school straight out of eighth grade, effectively skipping their freshman years of high school. Since they were the age of freshmen, they were labeled “‘shmen” by the other students (it was invariable for gender or number. So you would say “Michael is a ‘shmen. Ciara is a ‘shmen. Michael and Ciara are ‘shmen”). I’m pretty sure that using ‘shmen that way was specific to that school, but I’m curious…has anyone else seen that expression?
I’ve never heard “‘shmen” or “frosh” as an expression. I went to high school in New Mexico and Texas not too long ago, and we used the term “freshman”. It was considered gender-neutral. I don’t think any of us used the term “first-year”.
It’s interesting to learn all these dialectal differences!
P.S. This might vary by region, but where I’ve lived (California, New Mexico, and Texas), I don’t think we use “junior” or “senior” as 3rd & 4th year in contexts other than schooling. For example, we wouldn’t say, “The TV show is in its junior year.”
I don’t think we use “sophomore” to refer to politicians around here, but maybe I’ve just never heard it. We do use “freshman” in that context, though.
P.P.S. I don’t know if you know this already, but, at least in my dialect, “sophomore” is pronounced in 2 syllables. We basically ignore the second “o”. Throwing it out there as a fun fact.