Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. bizarre.

1898		Times (Richmond, VA) 28 Aug. 15/1: The Freakish Pretty Hats of Autumn. Tall plumes are worn by the girl who rushes the season.
1908		Hull Dly Mail 14 Apr. 3/1: Freakish Lambs [...] a lamb with a pair of horns, the lamb’s head resembling a calf.
1914		Day Book (Chicago) 29 Sept. 13/1: A few freakish fantasies of futurism.
1926		Swindown Advertiser 23 Oct. 5/4: [headline] Freakish Weather. Thunder, Hail and Frost.
1955		‘Hal Ellson’ Rock 81: This jalopy rambles down the street. It’s a real freakish machine. [Ibid.] 100: That Lubo is freakish.

2. homosexual, of either gender.

1929		Bertha Idaho ‘Down on Pennsylvania Avenue’ 🎵 Let’s take a trip down to that cabaret where they turns night into day, / Some freakish sights you surely see, you can’t tell the he’s from the she’s.
1929		N.Y. Sun. News 3 Nov. in AS VI:2 158: freakish is used to describe an effeminate man or a mannish woman.
1930		George Hannah ‘Freakish Man Blues’ 🎵 She call me a freakish man.
1965		B. Jackson Get Your Ass in the Water (1974) 155: In the first interview the nut doctors knew / she was as freakish as a three-dollar bill.
1969		‘Iceberg Slim’ Mama Black Widow vii: Otis Tilson’s heartbreaking struggle to free himself of the freakish bitch inside him.

3. sexually deviant.

c.1930		(ref. to late 19C) N. Kimball Amer. Madam (1981) 237: His son [...] was going there with a freakish friend and he feared trouble.
1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 217: girl: All the chicks is always talkin’ ’bout you and Pops. Sure it ain’t somethin’ freakish goin’ down ’tween you two?
1956		Billie Holiday Lady Sings the Blues (1975) 29: But any kind of freakish felings are better than no feelings at all.
1979		‘Iceberg Slim’ Airtight Willie and Me 9: Lee, your mama is a freakish bitch that hasta crap in a ditch ’cause she humped a railroad switch.

4. (US black) lustful, sexually eager.

1958		Hughes & Bontemps Book of Negro Folklore 205: I’m needin’ my man so bad / I’m feelin’ freakish.
1965		(con. 1930s) R. Wright Lawd Today 187: ‘They say the French is immoral.’ ‘Yeah, that’s where all the freakish stuff comes from.’.
1971		R.D. Pharr S.R.O. (1998) 19: The bitch had looked freakish as hell, and he wondered if the kids might [...] try it out in the back room.
c.1990		H. Huncke ‘Oral History of Benzedrine’ in Huncke Reader (1998) 341: [Benzedrine] kind of encouraged the freakish aspect [...] We found that it helped the sex drive!

5. (US black) exciting, wonderful.

1970

A. Young Snakes (1971) 35: Get the sounds goin [...] all them freakish sounds and all that groovy feelin be buzzin thru me. It do bring a good feelin.