free
Definitions
General English
- adjective able to do what you want; not forced to do anything
Accounting
- adjective not costing any money
- verb to make something available or easy
Agriculture
- adjective not attached, confined or controlled
- verb to release something or someone from constraint
Computing
- adjective available for use or not currently being used
- noun used to describe spare bytes available on disk or in memory
- verb to erase, remove or back up programs or files to provide space in memory
Information & Library Science
- suffix (written as -free)added to adjectives to show that they do not have the thing mentioned
Law
- verb to release someone from a responsibility or from prison
Military
- adjective not in custody or under another person’s domination
Publishing
- adjective not needing to be paid for
Origin & History of “free”
The prehistoric ancestor of free was a term of affection uniting the members of a family in a common bond, and implicitly excluding their servants or slaves – those who were not ‘free’. It comes ultimately from Indo-European *prijos, whose signification ‘dear, beloved’ is revealed in such collateral descendants as Sanskrit priyás ‘dear’, Russian prijatel’ ‘friend’, and indeed English friend. Its Germanic offspring, *frijaz, displays the shift from ‘affection’ to ‘liberty’, as shown in German frei, Dutch vrij, Swedish and Danish fri, and English free. Welsh rhydd ‘free’ comes from the same Indo-European source.
