What does “fressen” mean in German?

German has two verbs for eating. Essen is for people: die Mutter isst Suppe (the mother eats soup). Fressen is for animals: der Hund frisst Fleisch (the dog eats meat). The split goes back to Old High German and is alive in everyday speech. Say frisst about a person and you are calling them a greedy animal — a deliberate and stinging register drop, not an accident.

The clip makes the contrast easy to see: human actions use essen throughout, while the single animal sentence switches to frisst. The conjugation mirrors essen (ich esse / du isst) but with an f: ich fresse, du frisst, er/sie frisst. In casual self-deprecating speech a German might say ich hab' gegessen wie ein Tier (“I ate like an animal”) rather than ich habe gefressen, because applying fressen to oneself still sounds coarse. Applied to someone else, it is a clear insult. The noun Fressen (neuter) can mean grub or chow — slightly rough but not always hostile in that form.