free agent

plural free agents

1. hobbiesA professional athlete who is free to play for or sign a contract to play for any team.

   Or, if that’s too cringe, you can put it like The Wall Street Journal did at the end of last month: “With this spending bonanza and frenzy of movement, AI geeks are being treated more like NBA free agents.”

   2025 July 14, Katie Baker, quoting Wall Street Journal, “The Summer of Free AI-gency”, in The Ringer

2. human sciencesA person who acts freely, or without constraint to a higher power.

   Nevertheless, in despite of the shackles by which he is bound, it is pretended he is a free agent, or that independent of the causes by which he is moved, he determines his own will; regulates his own condition.

   1820 [1770], “Of the System of Man's free agency”, in The System of Nature, translation of Système de la Nature by Paul Henri Thiry Holbach