# frank

Pronunciation: say "FRANGK" /fɹæŋk/

## Adjective

1. Honest and open, often in a slightly blunt way, without holding back or disguising anything.
   - Simple: Honest and direct, often in a way that seems a bit blunt.
   - _Let me be frank with you: the budget will not cover a second hire._
   - _The memoir offers a frank account of her years of addiction and recovery._
5. Clinically obvious and unmistakable, so plain that it needs no further proof.
   - Simple: Very clear and easy for a doctor to see.
   - _Without treatment, the chest infection progressed to frank pneumonia within a week._
   - _The surgeon noted frank pus draining from the incision._

## Noun

2. A hot dog or sausage.
   - Simple: A hot dog or a sausage.
   - _Dinner on the last night of the camping trip was franks and beans from a dented pot._
   - _The stand sells a jumbo frank on a toasted bun for three dollars._
4. An official mark or signature on a letter or package showing that postage has been paid or that it may be sent free of charge.
   - Simple: A mark on a letter showing that the postage is paid or that no stamp is needed.
   - _Most of the mail on her desk carried a company frank rather than a stamp._
   - _The sorting clerk glanced at the frank in the corner and tossed the letter onto the pile._
6. The privilege of sending mail free of postage, held by certain officials such as members of a legislature.
   - Simple: The right some officials have to send mail without paying postage.
   - _Critics say lawmakers abuse the frank by mailing glossy newsletters at public expense._
   - _Members of Congress can send official mail under the frank._

## Verb

3. To mark a letter or package to show that postage has been paid or is not needed, so it can be sent without a stamp.
   - Simple: To mark a letter to show the postage is paid, so it needs no stamp.
   - _Clerks frank the outgoing letters in the mailroom each afternoon._
   - _The new machine franked a whole sack of envelopes before lunch._
7. To send something by public conveyance, such as the mail, free of expense.
   - Simple: To send something by a public service, like the mail, for free.
   - _The steamship line promised to frank the missionaries' books and medicine to the island stations._
   - _Because lawmakers may frank official mail, constituents receive their newsletters with a printed signature where the stamp would normally be._

## Noun

8. An enclosure in which pigs are kept. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: A pen where pigs are kept.

## Verb

9. To shut an animal up in a sty or pen; by extension, to cram it with food and fatten it. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: To keep an animal shut in a pen, or to feed it a lot to make it fat.

## Adjective

10. Free and not bound by any restrictions or limitations. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: Free, with no rules or limits on it.
11. Generous and liberal, giving freely and in plenty. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: Generous and happy to give a lot.
12. Lacking moral restraint; loose and dissolute in behavior. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: Wild and without any moral limits.

## Other meanings

- (noun) The gray heron.

## Origin

**Meanings 1, 3–7, 10–12** — Middle English frank was taken from Old French franc ("free"), a word that grew out of the name of the Franks, an early Germanic confederation whose own name may go back to *frankō, a Proto-West Germanic word for "javelin" or "spear". Frank, franc and farang are doublets of it.
**Meaning 2** — A shortened form of frankfurter.
**Meanings 8–9** — From Old French franc.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/frank (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).