Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Born as a free person, not as a slave or serf.
  • adjective Relating to or befitting a person born free.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Born free; born to the conditions and privileges of citizenship; not in hereditary vassalage; inheriting liberty.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Born free; not born in vassalage; inheriting freedom.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Born free rather than in bondage or as a slave

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective born free of free parents

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From free + born.

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Examples

  • [FN#194] Or "freeborn," the Arabic word used here having this double meaning.

    The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Volume IV Anonymous 1879

  • [FN#193] Or "freeborn," the Arabic word used here having this double meaning.

    The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Volume IV Anonymous 1879

  • If there were naught else, it were enough that you have called a freeborn thane's daughter a thrall to your evil mistress.

    A King's Comrade A Story of Old Hereford 1884

  • The requirement of being "freeborn" harkens back to the earliest days of Freemasonry.

    Kenyan Analyst 2009

  • The requirement of being "freeborn" harkens back to the earliest days of Freemasonry.

    Kenyan Analyst 2009

  • I need more caffeine, to offset my loss of an hour of sleep to my region's move to "daylight saving time," which as Bill Kauffman points out is "that puzzling ritual of mass clock-winding ill befitting freeborn Americans."

    Libraries Maxine 2009

  • He plans to introduce measures that will see freeborn Englishmen having every last detail of their every movement in and out of the country handed over to the State.

    Archive 2008-08-03 2008

  • As freeborn colonial Englishmen, this amounted to tyranny and was not an acceptable obligation for them to have to endure.

    It’s Patriots’ Day 2010

  • A long, simple, sleeved tunic bordered with a purple stripe was the standard uniform for both freeborn boys and girls in Rome, and a protective neck chain called a bulla in the case of boys and a moon-shaped lunula for girls the moon being the symbol of Diana, the Roman goddess of chastity their only adornment.

    Caesars’ Wives Annelise Freisenbruch 2010

  • He plans to introduce measures that will see freeborn Englishmen having every last detail of their every movement in and out of the country handed over to the State.

    Mr. Byrne's 'Progressive Britshness' 2008

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