Freaks [noun]

Still, fans can’t help but happily freak out that Janet Hubert, the actress who played the original Aunt Viv in the ’90s series, was included in the festivities.

Two weeks ago, after freak lightning strikes torched Northern California but before the inferno of Labor Day weekend had begun, a friend called to talk, like you do when the world is turning to crap and nothing is stable or makes sense.

In a matter of weeks, California has been hit with two record-breaking heat waves, hundreds of blazes, freak lightning storms and dangerously poor air quality.

People freak out if there’s a single bad day whereas in the past there was a little more leniency.

People also can’t tell if you have a mask when it’s hiding in your pocket, so you could freak out an immunocompromised hiker or runner.

They are freaked out about our planet’s future, with an urgency few others have mustered.

Upon discovering she harbored a tapeworm, Tovar “freaked out.”

But to others it was only a freak of the lad's imagination, which had been much influenced by the reading of romances.

Another contributory source to this oddest freak of my life was the terms on which I had returned to the college.

A child born with three legs is a freak of nature, a monstrosity, yet it sometimes appears.