фраер (frayer)

What it means

1. 1.

   Originally, in camp argot, anyone outside the thieves' world — a civilian, and by extension an easy mark. The sense survives in the proverb жадность фраера сгубила, 'greed was the sucker's undoing'.

2. 2.

   In general speech it now means a flashy, self-important man who is not as hard as he thinks. Dated, and heard mostly from older speakers or in deliberate period style.

Examples with translations

• Ходит как фраер, а сам ничего не может.

  Struts about like a big man and can't do a thing.

• Жадность фраера сгубила.

  Greed was the mug's undoing.

  Note: A fixed saying, used well outside any criminal context — it is what you say when someone overreaches and loses everything.

Where it comes from

From Yiddish frayer, ultimately German Freier 'suitor, free man', which in the argot came to mean a free person — that is, not a convict — and so a potential victim.

Other forms

Romanised as:

frayer