frat
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of frat
An Americanism dating back to 1890–95; by shortening
Explanation
A frat is a club for male college students. The stereotypical frat boy is a rich kid on spring break drinking beer, doing chest bumps, and crashing Daddy’s Mercedes. But of course some frat boys are very nice. Seriously, bro. The word frat is short for fraternity, and both words mean "body of men associated by common interest," from the Latin root fraternitatem, or "brotherhood." A frat will usually have their own house and a name made up of two or three Greek letters. A frat can be a close-knit community of young men who live, work, and volunteer in the community together. Some frats, however, are exclusionary societies that haze new members and throw drunken campus parties.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“Those groups would end up endorsing a bunch of frat bros.”
From Slate • Dec. 18, 2025
Last week, with the season drawing near, a crowd of frat brothers flooded onto the practice court at Galen Center.
From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 3, 2025
In her freshman year, Chan went to a frat party with a friend who was worried that a boy she’d developed a crush on might be sketchy.
From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 21, 2025
He didn’t drink and he was about to get married, so the frat house atmosphere of a professional baseball team wasn’t one he partook of.
From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 3, 2025
So Louie moved into Pete’s frat house and, with Pete coaching him, trained obsessively.
From "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
