freedom

freedom 1 independence, autonomy, sovereignty, autarchy, autarky (see under FREE adj)

Analogous words: liberation, emancipation, release, delivery, enfranchisement, manumission (see corresponding verbs at FREE): liberty, license (see FREEDOM)

Antonyms: bondage

Contrasted words: *servitude, slavery

2 Freedom, liberty, license are comparable when meaning the state or condition of one who can think, believe, or act as he wishes.

Freedom (see also under FREE adj) is the term of widest application; in philosophy, for example, it often implies a state or condition in which there is not only total absence of restraint but release even from the compulsion of necessity; at the other extreme, in ordinary casual use, freedom merely implies the absence of any awareness of being restrained, repressed, or hampered; between these two extremes the term may imply the absence of a definite restraint or of compulsion from a particular power or agency

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me this unchartered freedom tires— Wordsworth

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the freedom of the press

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he was not affected by her reserve, and talked to her with the same freedom as to anybody else— Archibald Marshall

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who would not say, with Huxley, "Let me be wound up every day like a watch, to go right fatally, and I ask no better freedom"—James

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Liberty is often used interchangeably with freedom, but it often carries one of two implications which are not so marked in the use of freedom. The first of these implications is the power to choose what one wishes to do, say, believe, or support as distinguished from the state of being uninhibited in doing or thinking

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had the liberty to come and go as he pleased

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in totalitarian states there is no liberty of expression for writers and no liberty of choice for their readers— Huxley

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freedom in thought, the liberty to try and err, the right to be his own man— Mencken

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The second of these implications is deliverance or release from restraint or compulsion

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set a slave at liberty

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the prisoners were willing to fight for their liberty

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from bondage freed, at liberty to serve as you loved best— Baring

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License often implies the liberty to disobey the rules or regulations imposed on the many, but not necessarily governing all, when a great advantage is to be gained by disobedience

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poetic license

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sometimes, with truly medieval license, singing to the sacred music . .! songs from the street— Pater

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a general must be allowed considerable license in the field

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has little truck with those who have taken literary license— Homer

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More often, however, the term implies an abuse of liberty in the sense of the power to do exactly what one pleases

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license they mean when they cry Liberty— Milton

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many persons think that freedom of the press and liberty of free speech often degenerate into license

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Caesar's legions . . . were enjoying their victory in the license which is miscalled liberty— Froude

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Analogous words: *exemption, immunity: scope, *range, compass, sweep

Antonyms: necessity

Contrasted words: compulsion, constraint, coercion (see corresponding verbs at FORCE)