free
Meanings
- Unconstrained.
- Not imprisoned or enslaved.
- Generous; liberal.
- Clear of offence or crime; guiltless; innocent.
- Without obligations.
- To be enjoyed by anyone freely.
- Upholding individual rights.
- With no or only freedom-preserving limitations on distribution or modification.
- Intended for release, and omitting debugging diagnostics, as opposed to a checked version.
- Obtainable without any payment.
- Complimentary.
- In any of various technical senses generic, universal.
- Without needing to pay.
- Freely; willingly.
- To make free; set at liberty; release.
- To rid of something that confines or oppresses.
- To relinquish (previously allocated memory) to the system.
- Abbreviation of free kick.
- A free transfer.
- The usual means of restarting play after a foul is committed, where the non-offending team restarts from where the foul was committed.
- Abbreviation of freestyle.
- A surname.
- An unincorporated community in Parish Grove Township, Benton County, Indiana, United States.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *preyH- Proto-Indo-European *-ós Proto-Indo-European *priHós Proto-Germanic *frijwaz Proto-West Germanic *friu Old English frēo Middle English fre English free From Middle English free, fre, freo, from Old English frēo (“free”), from Proto-West Germanic *frī, from Proto-Germanic *frijaz (“beloved, not in bondage”), from Proto-Indo-European *priHós (“pleased, loved”), from *preyH- (“to please, love”). Related to friend. cognates, etc Germanic cognates include Scots fre (“free”), North Frisian frai, frei, fri, Frii (“free”), Saterland Frisian fräi (“free”), West Frisian frij (“free”), Dutch vrij (“free”), German frei (“free”), Low German free (“free”), Luxembourgish fräi (“free”), Vilamovian frȧj (“free”), Yiddish פֿרײַ (fray, “free”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish fri (“free”), Faroese fríur (“free”), Gothic 𐍆𐍂𐌴𐌹𐍃 (freis, “free”). Other cognates include Sanskrit प्रिय (priyá-, “beloved”). Germanic and Celtic are the only Indo-European language branches in which the PIE word with the meaning of "dear, beloved" acquired the additional meaning of "free" in the sense of "not in bondage". This was an extension of the idea of "characteristic of those who are dear and beloved", in other words friends and tribe members (in contrast to unfree inhabitants from other tribes and prisoners of war, many of which were among the slaves – compare the Latin use of liberi to mean both "free persons" and "children of a family").