Abstract.Letp"(x) = y"x" + •■ ■ denote the nth polynomial orthonormal with respect to the weight exp (-x^/ß) where ß > 0 is an even integer. G. Freud conjectured and Al. Magnus proved that, writing a" = t"-\/in, the expression a"n~1/P has a limit as n -» oo. It is shown that this expression has an asymptotic expansion in terms of negative even powers oí n. In the course of this, a combinatorial enumeration problem concerning one-dimensional lattice walk is solved and its relationship to a combinatorial identity of J. L. W. V. Jensen is explored.Consider the polynomials pn that are orthonormal with respect to the weight function exp(-\x\ß/ß) on the real line, where ß is a positive real number. Denoting by y" the leading coefficient of pn (n > 0) and writing an = y" i/y" for n > 1 and an = 0 for n < 0, G. Freud conjectured thatholds for every positive even ß (see [3, Conjecture, p. 5]; his conjecture has a slightly different form, as he considered the weight function |jc|pexp(-|jc|^) rather than the one above). He also entertained the possibility that this conjecture is valid for all positive real ß. In case ß > 0 is even, he proved that if the limit on the left exists then it must have the value on the right-hand side (see [3, Theorem 1 on p. 4]), and he established the conjecture for ß = 2, 4, and 6 (see [3, pp. 5-6]). He accomplished these by extracting information from the formula (2) -=\ Pn(x)p"-X(x)x-l\x\ exp -|x| /ß) dx,