A student in the first year — of a four-year American high school, or of an American university. American schooling names each year, and freshman is the first of the set: freshman, sophomore, junior, senior. You will meet those four words constantly in American films and TV, so they are worth learning together. Freshman also works as a describing word placed before a noun: freshman year, freshman English, the freshman dorm. Beyond school, Americans extend it to anyone in their first term or first year in a job, especially in politics — a freshman senator is one newly elected. The word has -man in it, and although it has long been used of women too, many American universities now avoid it for that reason and write 'first-year student' in official documents. Students themselves still say freshman all the time.