liberate · verb, verb, adjective1
- Proto-Indo-European · derived from*h₁léwdʰeros“free”
- Latin · learned borrowing fromlīberātus“freed, liberated; absolved, acquitted; released”
- English todayliberate
Learned borrowing from Latin līberātus (“freed, liberated; absolved, acquitted; released”); see English -ate (suffix forming verbs, and used as the ending of participial adjectives and obsolete past participles from Latin). Līberātus is the perfect passive participle of līberō (“to free, liberate; to absolve, acquit; to release”), from līber (“free, unrestricted”), + -ō (suffix forming regular first-conjugation verbs); and līberō is ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁léwdʰeros (“free”), from *h₁lewdʰ- (“to grow; people”) + *-teros (contrastive or oppositional adjectival suffix) (*h₁léwdʰeros possibly originally meant ‘belonging to one’s own people’, excluding slaves who were captured from other groups of people, and thus later came to mean “free (not enslaved)”). Not related to deliberate.
liberate · noun2
- Latin · derived fromlīberāte“deliver”
- Late Latin · derived fromliberate“name of such a writ”
- Anglo-Norman · derived fromliberate
- Law French · derived fromliberate
- Middle English · inherited fromliberate“warrant for payment of an allowance, debt, pension, etc.; warrant for delivery of property from a sheriff’s custody”
- English todayliberate
From Late Middle English liberate (“warrant for payment of an allowance, debt, pension, etc.; warrant for delivery of property from a sheriff’s custody”, noun), from Law French liberate, from Anglo-Norman liberate, and from their etymon Late Latin liberate (“name of such a writ”), a noun use of Latin līberāte (“deliver”) (commonly the first word of such writs), the second-person plural present active imperative of līberō (“to free, liberate; to absolve, acquit; to release”): see further at etymology 1. Compare English allocate (“warrant for the payment of an allowance, debt, pension, etc.”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.