Half-free
adj ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Halfway or partially free. not-comparable
"Many half-free slaves were forced to continue to work for the Dutch West India Company even after they were set free, and the company even required half-free blacks to pay a yearly tax consisting of crops that they had raised on their farms."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Many half-free slaves were forced to continue to work for the Dutch West India Company even after they were set free, and the company even required half-free blacks to pay a yearly tax consisting of crops that they had raised on their farms."
Etymology
From Middle English *half-free, from Old English healffrēo (“half-free”), equivalent to half- + free. Cognate with Dutch halfvrij (“half-free”), German halbfrei (“half-free”), Danish halvfri (“half-free”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.