Context

The informant claims that they were the original source for this saying, and truth-be-told I haven’t heard it anywhere else. Around the time of origination, the word “freak” was making its rounds on the internet. In particular, the song “Nasty” by Tinashe had gone viral, and the lyric “is somebody gonna match my freak?” had become a popular TikTok audio. This led to the word’s more frequent usage, and since it’s aurally similar to the words “frick” or “fuck”  in the phrase “what the frick” or “what the fuck,” that’s probably how it snuck itself into the informant’s vocabulary. 

“What the freak?” is most often used immediately after a person says something tabooistic or off-color. It is mostly synonymous with “who said that?”, the implication being that someone other than the speaker had said something weird, and the speaker is reacting to them. “What the freak” is almost certainly euphemistic in nature, and could be an example of a minced oath, a phrase watered down from a more vulgar starting point (in this case, “what the fuck”).

While the phrase has been recorded online, this particular use of “what the freak” that highlights the absurdity of a statement seems to originate from my friend group.

Analysis

This is definitely not a widespread phrase. Only the informant, our housemates, and even myself are the only ones I’ve heard use it, or at least this specific use-case. But I don’t think it diminishes its value as a piece of spoken folklore circled amongst a close, tight-knit group. It speaks to a level of comfort we all share as friends and roommates, and highlights the safe, weird space we’ve created together. When someone says “what the freak,” it immediately sparks laughter and joy in our living room. I think that speaks to the power of folk speech as a means of creating a community identity.