freely

UK/ˈfɹiːli/US/ˈfɹili/

adverbB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #4,009 of 15,258neutral

Freely means without restriction, or without being forced. Move freely, freely available, freely admitted.

Freely admitted is the interesting use — it means the person volunteered something against their own interest, which is why it carries weight. Freely available means no barrier rather than no cost. Note free, whose Old English sense was noble as well as unbound.

Definitions of freely

1adverbfreelyWithout restriction or force.B2
“Birds fly freely between the trees in the huge aviary.”

freely is a manner.

Where it comes from

Old English freolice is free plus the -lice ending. Free once meant noble or beloved as well as unbound.

Old English
frēolīc — free, freeborn, glorious, stately, magnificent, noble, beautiful, charming
Middle English
frely
English, today
freely

From Middle English frely, freelich, from Old English frēolīc (“free, freeborn, glorious, stately, magnificent, noble, beautiful, charming”), equivalent to free + ly. Compare Middle Low German vrilik, vrigelik (“free”), Middle High German vrīlich (“free”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

freely in the wild

A freely falling object may not necessarily be falling down in the vertical direction.
Free fall
For this reason, authors whose documents are freely available are more likely to be represented in the index.
CiteSeerX
However, about 300 of the standards produced by ISO and IEC's Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC 1) have been made freely and publicly available.
List of ISO standards
Until 2001 it was maintained by US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) as a freely available publication.
Registry of Toxic Effects of Chemical Substances

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

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