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PlainSpell

frass

/fɹæs/noun, adjective

frass is a noun meaning “The droppings or excrement of insect larvae” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-R-A-S-S, and it appears about once in every 18 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of frass is frasses.

What does frass mean?

noun

  1. 1

    The droppings or excrement of insect larvae.

  2. 2

    The sawdust-like byproduct of wood-boring insects like woodworm, termites, old-house borers or powderpost beetles.

  3. 3

    informalartificial turf

  4. 4

    Alternative form of ferash.

adjective

  1. 1

    Under the influence of marijuana, stoned.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce frass?

  • /fɹæs/

As an adjective (“Under the influence of marijuana, stoned”): [fræs(t)], [fras(t)].

As a noun (“artificial turf”): /fɹæs/, /fɹɑːs/.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-frass.wav, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-frass2.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of frass

  • frasses plural
  • frasser comparative
  • frassest superlative
  • frassed

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is frass?

Frass appears about once in every 18 million words in written English, the 127,184th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Frass in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense sawdust from insect boring:

LanguageWords
Frenchvermoulure

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does frass come from?

Borrowed from German Fraß.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).