Libre
adj, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A free (not enslaved) black person in a French- or Spanish-colonized area, especially New Orleans. historical
"For quotations using this term, see Citations:libre."
- 1 Especially of the will: free, independent, unconstrained. not-comparable, obsolete, rare
"He [God] Adame lent a libre will to follow what he liſt, / And with his holy ſpirit, and grace his choſen dois aſſiſt: [...]"
- 2 With very few limitations on distribution or the right to access the source code to create improved versions, but not necessarily free of charge. not-comparable
"One more point leads toward Free Software in education: when students get jobs, they prefer to use tools they learned at school in order to minimize extra learning efforts. This fact should lead colleges to teach only those tools not owned by anyone—those that are libre."
- 3 Not enslaved (of a black person in a French- or Spanish-colonized area, especially New Orleans). historical, not-comparable
"For quotations using this term, see Citations:libre."
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"A Cuba Libre is a cocktail with a rum base."
Etymology
Sense 1 (“especially of the will: free, independent”) is borrowed from French libre (“at liberty, free; clear, free, vacant; free, without obligation”), from Latin līber (“free, unrestricted”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁lewdʰ- (“people”). Senses 2 (“(software) with very few limitations on distribution or improvement”) and 3 ("not enslaved") are either borrowed from the French word or the Spanish libre (“free: not enslaved or imprisoned; without obligation; unconstrained by distrust or timidity; not containing, without”), from the same Latin etymon as above.
Related phrases
More for "libre"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.