[f. FRESH a. + -ER1.] One who or that which comes fresh. a. Univ. slang: = FRESHMAN. b. A fresh breeze. Hence Fresherdom, the condition of a freshman.
1882. Society, 14 Oct., 4/2. The entry of freshers is about two hundred under the average.
1891. Miss S. J. Duncan, Amer. Girl Lond., 254. According to the pure usage of Oxonian English he was a ‘Fresher.’
1894. Field, 9 June, 836/2. The Britannia took in her flying jib, a fresher from off St. Mary’s Marshes laying on until the Prince of Wales’s cutter was fairly foaming.
1895. H. Legge, The Religion of the Undergraduate, in 19th Cent., XXXVIII. Nov., 863. One’s emergence from the condition of ‘fresherdom.’
