Other forms: freed, freeing, frees, freer
Free means it costs nothing. The extra toothbrush taped to the box, the refill they do not charge for, the little cube of cheese handed to you at the supermarket door.
The second free is bigger and older: not held, not owned, not shut in. A free country, a freed prisoner, free to leave whenever you like. A third one is about time and space — are you free on Tuesday, is this seat free — meaning nobody has claimed it. As a verb you free a trapped animal or free up an afternoon; as an ending, -free means without: sugar-free, smoke-free, hassle-free. English uses one word where several languages use two, so watch which free you mean: a free man is not a man nobody paid for.
1adjectivefreeCosting nothing.~41%
“The museum is free on the first Sunday of the month.”
synonyms: complimentary
2adjectiveliberatedNot held prisoner and not controlled by anyone; allowed to do as you choose.~25%
“After eleven years inside he walked out a free man.”
synonyms: liberated, independent
3adjectiveavailableNot busy, or not being used by anyone.~2%
“Are you free for lunch on Thursday?”
4adjectiveclearWithout something unwanted; used with of or from.~16%
“She wanted one week free from interruptions.”
synonyms: clear of, rid of
5verbreleaseTo release someone or something that is trapped or held.~16%
“Firefighters freed the driver from the wreck in under an hour.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 12 sentences found in the wild and placed 12 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Free and friend are the same family. Old English frēo goes back to Proto-Germanic *frijaz, beloved, not in bondage, and further to Proto-Indo-European *priHós, pleased or loved, from *preyH-, to please, to love. In a household of that world the free people were the loved ones, the family, as opposed to the slaves. The word for beloved became the word for not owned.
Middle English
fre
English, today
free
Built from
From Middle English fre. From Middle English fre, from Old English frēo, frēoh, frī, friġ, frīoh (“free”), from Proto-West Germanic frī, from Proto-Germanic frijaz (“beloved, not in bondage”), from Proto-Indo-European priHós (“pleased, loved”), from preyH- (“to please; to love”). Related to friend. cognates, etc
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA