Definitions

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

  • transitive verb To free from bondage, oppression, or restraint; liberate.
  • transitive verb Law To release (a child) from the control of parents or a guardian.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Freed; emancipated.
  • To set free from servitude or bondage by voluntary act; restore from slavery to freedom; liberate: as, to emancipate a slave.
  • To set free or liberate; in a general sense, to free from civil restriction, or restraint of any kind; liberate from bondage, subjection, or controlling power or influence: as, to emancipate one from prejudices or error.
  • Synonyms Emancipate, Manumit, Enfranchise, Liberate, disenthrall, release, unfetter, unshackle. To manumit is the act of an individual formally freeing a slave; the word has no figurative uses. To emancipate is to free from a literal or a figurative slavery: as, the slaves in the West Indies were emancipated; to emancipate the mind. To enfranchise is to bring into freedom or into civil rights; hence the word often refers to the lifting of a slave into full civil equality with freemen. Liberate is a general word for setting or making free, whether from slavery, from confinement, or from real or figurative oppressions, as fears, doubts, etc.

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

  • adjective Set at liberty.
  • transitive verb To set free from the power of another; to liberate; as: (a) To set free, as a minor from a parent. (b) To set free from bondage; to give freedom to; to manumit.
  • transitive verb To free from any controlling influence, especially from anything which exerts undue or evil influence; as, to emancipate one from prejudices or error.

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

  • verb To set free from the power of another; to liberate; as:
  • verb To free from any controlling influence, especially from anything which exerts undue or evil influence; as, to emancipate one from prejudices or error.
  • adjective Freed; set at liberty.

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

  • verb give equal rights to; of women and minorities
  • verb free from slavery or servitude

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin ēmancipāre, ēmancipāt- : ē-, ex-, ex- + mancipāre, to sell, transfer (from manceps, mancip-, purchaser; see man- in Indo-European roots).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin emancipatus, past participle of emancipare ("to declare (a son) free and independent of the father's power by the thrice-repeated act of mancipatio and manumission, give from one's own power or authority into that of another, give up, surrender"), from e ("out") + mancipare ("to transfer ownership in"), from manceps ("purchaser, a contractor, literally, one who takes in hand"), from manus ("hand") + capere ("to take"). See manual, and capable.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word emancipate.

Examples

  • Yet in the early decades of the 20th Century, they said, the assumption behind machines had been that "labor is an evil"; the new technological devices did not so much "emancipate" workers, as "evict" them.

    Agrarianism and the Popular Education Culture 2008

  • Seeking to 'emancipate' the individual from authority.

    No, conservatives are not progressives Burke's Corner 2007

  • Seeking to 'emancipate' the individual from authority.

    Archive 2007-12-01 Burke's Corner 2007

  • Just to give one very wacky example, suppose a post-Singularity intelligence decided to "emancipate" us all from the limits of human sexuality by setting everyone up with a complete set of both male and female reproductive organs?

    The Speculist: Posthuman Ethics 2006

  • Just to give one very wacky example, suppose a post-Singularity intelligence decided to "emancipate" us all from the limits of human sexuality by setting everyone up with a complete set of both male and female reproductive organs?

    The Speculist: July 2006 Archives 2006

  • Do not seek to "emancipate" yourself -- do not strive to unsex yourself and become a Lucy Stone, or a Rev. Miss

    The Wedding Guest 1847

  • One intention of the season, in the words of the powers that be, was to "emancipate" John from his mother, but his stroppy teenager act whenever the subject of Riley came up made him less, not more sympathetic.

    DVD Times 2009

  • It is pure social activism, not aimed at helping children gain wisdom, but to "emancipate" them from blind belief in Western civilisation, especially what they might learn from "literature".

    EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL 2008

  • "emancipate" the African majority through the attainment of

    ANC Daily News Briefing 2004

  • Villari regretfully concluded that the “only way an Italian can emancipate himself from this inferior state is to abandon all sense of national pride and to identify completely with the Americans.”

    A Renegade History of the United States Thaddeus Russell 2010

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.