frau

Borrowed from German Frau. Doublet of frow, vrou, and vrouw.

• IPA^(key): /fɹaʊ/
• Rhymes: -aʊ

frau (plural fraus)

1. A woman, especially a German woman.
   • 1911, John Howard Brown, E M Norris, editors, Lamb’s Textile Industries of the United States: Embracing Biographical Sketches of Prominment Men and a Historical Resumé of the Progress of Textile Manufacture from the Earliest Records to the Present Time, volume I, Boston, Mass.: James H. Lamb Company, page 149:

     To Germantown, Pa., the German frauen carried their domestic industry of the hand knitting of woolen hose, and before 1775 there were one hundred and fifty knitting frames at Germantown and in the vicinity of the Brandywine; […]

   • 1961, Goethe, translated by Walter Kaufman, Faust, line 2465:

     Witch: / Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! / You damned old beast! You cursed old sow! / You leave the kettle and singe the frau.

   • 2007 January 12, Grace Glueck, “Fun With Studio Crafts: When the Traditional Gets Quirky”, in New York Times‎:

     It presents Dürer’s mother as a sharp-nosed, world-weary German frau looking wryly out at life from under a decorous wimple.

• house frau

• Rauf, Urfa, fuar

Borrowed from Latin fraus.

• IPA^(key): (Central, Balearic, Valencia)
• Rhymes: -aw

frau m (plural fraus)

1. fraud

• fraudulent

• “frau” in Diccionari de la llengua catalana, segona edició, Institut d’Estudis Catalans.
• “frau”, in Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2024
• “frau” in Diccionari normatiu valencià, Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.
• “frau” in Diccionari català-valencià-balear, Antoni Maria Alcover and Francesc de Borja Moll, 1962.

From Frau by making the first letter lower-case. Coined as an alternative to the male-sounding word man (“one”), which is cognate and homophonous with Mann (“adult male”). First used by feminists when writing about women, then occasionally used in general contexts.^[1][2] Compare the pronoun mensch. Compare also the use of she vs he in English to refer to someone whose gender is unknown.

• IPA^(key): /fraʊ̯/
• Homophone: Frau

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aʊ̯

frau

1. (indefinite, informal, slang, rare, often humorous) one, they (indefinite third-person singular pronoun)
   • 1998, Matthias Matussek, Die vaterlose Gesellschaft: überfällige Anmerkungen zum Geschlechterkampf, page 47:

     Sie ist selbst dann noch beschissen, wenn frau sie beendet hat.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

   • 2003, Ulrike Schlicht, Selbsterweiterungsprozesse alleinlebender Frauen, →ISBN, page 218:

     Wenn frau sich kennt, braucht sie nicht vor sich wegzulaufen.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

   • 2005, Aslı Sevindim, Candlelight Döner. Geschichten über meine deutsch-türkische Familie, Berlin: Ullstein, →ISBN, page 220:

     […] ich ziehe es heraus und halte es in die Höhe … Mein Gott, es ist ein Still-BH. Meine Augen kleben förmlich daran. Ein Büstenhalter, den frau vorne aufmachen kann …

      I pull it out and hold it into the height … Dear God, it is a nursing bra. My eyes were like they cleft to it. A brassière the woman can open in the front …

   • 2008, Gaye Suse Kromer, Obszöne Lust oder etablierte Unterhaltung?, page 163:

     Erst mal sechs Jahre alleine und frau muss auch zusehen, dass sie sich gerne hat. Das liebe ich, mit mir selbst zu sein und mich zu mögen und mich zu streicheln.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

   • 2008, L. Schäfer, Gemeindepädagogisches Forum 2008; Abschlussimpuls‎, archived from the original on 15 September 2016:

     … und wenn man / frau älter wird?

     … and when one gets older?

• The word is more frequently used by left-wing and/or feminist writers and speakers, which may use this word in a serious formal context, where this word is not usually acceptable, in order to express their political views. In informal context, such as magazine articles, frau is usually used just once in a text as a stylistic flourish to underline that a women-specific topic is discussed.

• “frau” in Duden online
• “frau” in Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache

• fraud

From Old Norse frauð.

• IPA^(key): /frœʊ̯ː/
• Rhymes: -œʊ̯ː

frau f or m (definite singular frauen or fraua, indefinite plural frauer or frauar, definite plural frauene or frauane)

1. (chiefly uncountable, dialectal) foam
2. (chiefly uncountable, dialectal, Trøndelag) dung; manure

• frode

• “frau” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.

• frua, fura