liberty
Pluralliberties (some meanings)
- 1The state or condition of being free.
The exiles longed for the liberty they had known before the war.
Philosophers have argued for centuries about what true liberty really means.
Similarfreedom, independence, autonomy
Oppositecaptivity, bondage, slavery, servitude
Note
The broadest sense, and the one the others narrow down. Middle English liberte came through Old French liberté from Latin libertas, built on liber, "free", the same root behind liberal. It names a condition rather than a single right, which is why it can be weighed and argued over, as in Isaiah Berlin's warning that liberty for wolves means death to lambs.
- 2Freedom to decide how to act and what to believe, and to express oneself however one chooses.
The new law expanded the liberty of citizens to assemble and protest.
Religious liberty allows people to follow any faith or none at all.
Similarfreedom, right, latitude
Oppositerestriction, constraint, restraint
- 3The state of not being in prison, enslaved, or forced to work against one's will.
After ten years behind bars, he finally regained his liberty.
The abolitionists fought to secure liberty for those held in bondage.
Similarfreedom, release, emancipation
Oppositeimprisonment, captivity, slavery, bondage
- 4Freedom from excessive control by the government.
Critics warned that the emergency powers chipped away at individual liberty.
The framers designed checks and balances to protect liberty from a powerful state.
Similarfreedom, autonomy, independence
Oppositetyranny, despotism, oppression, authoritarianism
- 5An act that oversteps accepted social bounds or proper conduct.
Helping himself to the host's study struck the guests as a real liberty.
She thought it a liberty that he answered her phone without permission.
Similarimpertinence, presumption, impudence, cheek, nerve
Oppositecourtesy, deference, respect
Note
Here the word turns from a condition into an act, and it is usually plural. People take liberties, and the phrase nearly always comes as a reproach: you needn't take such liberties. A single overstep can still be called a liberty. Compare the condition of being free: that is something a person has, while this is something a person takes.
- 6A short period during which a sailor is permitted to go ashore.
After weeks at sea, the crew was granted liberty in Naples.
Shore patrol rounded up the sailors whose liberty had ended at midnight.
Note
Sailors use it for shore time that is brief and routine, and that is what sets it apart from formal leave. It can be counted like a trip, as in a three-day liberty. It also works without an article, as something a crew is granted in port and must return from when it ends.
- 7A district forming a unit of local government administration in medieval England.
The abbey controlled a liberty whose courts answered to the abbot rather than the crown.
Several liberties bordered the city, each with distinct legal privileges.
Note
A term for the historian rather than the modern map. A liberty was a territory set apart from the ordinary county system. It was run under its own granted privileges and officers, was exempt from the sheriff's authority, and was often held by a lord or a monastic house. The name makes sense once you read the word as a privilege: the district was free of the usual reach of royal government.
- 8In the game Go, an empty point directly adjacent to a group of stones of the same color.
Surrounded on three sides, the white group clung to its final liberty.
Each move reduced the enemy group's liberties one by one.
Note
Go players measure a group's life in these empty points. Only points directly adjacent along the lines count, not diagonal ones. When an opponent fills a group's last liberty, the group is captured. For that reason the word is almost always counted: a group has two liberties or three, and every fight between groups becomes a race to take away the other side's liberties.
Practice
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Origin
It comes from Middle English liberte, from Old French liberté, from Latin libertas ("freedom"), which derives from liber ("free"): the same root as liberal.