freeman

plural freemen

1. A free person
   1. historicalusuallyA person who is not a serf or slave.

      1 more example

      [Editor David W. Blight said:] Deeply in need of father figures and spiritual hope, and “religiously seeking knowledge,” as he recalled it, the slave boy [the young Frederick Douglass] turned to a religious black man, a freeman named Charles Lawson, who worked as a drayman for a rope maker and lived on Happy Alley in Fells Point. Frederick spent countless hours with Lawson in the drayman’s shack reading the bible aloud, singing hymns, and praying together. “I could teach him the letter, but he could teach me the spirit,” Douglass remembered. Throughout his life Douglass would teach his teachers and learn from them at the same time. From old Lawson he gained […] above all […] a belief in a benevolent and protective God, the faith that his “life was under the guidance of a wisdom higher than my own.”

      1997 [1797], David W. Blight, “Editor's Introduction: The Peculiar Dialogue Between Caleb Bingham and Frederick Douglass”, in Caleb Bingham, edited by David W. Blight, The Columbian Orator, Bicentennial Edition (1997 republishing), New York University Press, →ISBN

      Antonyms: nonfreeman, slave, bondsman, serf

   2. historicalA burgher with full freedom of a city, as opposed to nobles, outsiders, bondsmen, and others.
   3. A person who has received an honorary freedom of a city.
   4. usuallyA person who is a citizen of a free country, as opposed to a subject of a tyranny or totalitarian dictatorship.

      There breathes no being but has some pretence / To that fine instinct called poetic sense; […] / The freeman, casting with unpurchased hand / The vote that shakes the turrets of the land.

      1836, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., “Poetry: A Metrical Essay”, republished in The Poems of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, 1862, OCLC 5091562, pages 7–8

   5. AustraliahistoricalA person who immigrated to Australia freely, as opposed to those transported as convicts, or such a transported convict who has regained his freedom.
   6. CanadaUShistoricalAn independent furtaker.

plural Freemans · alternative Freemon

1. countableA surname.

   It appears that Drs. Jones and Freeman account for the arch over the hagioscope at St. David's by saying, though without citing authorities, that there was a door there originally.

   1886, Miss M. A. R. Tucker, “St. David's”, in Walford's Antiquarian: A Magazine & Bibliographical Review

   1. countableuncountableAn English surname from Middle English.
   2. countableuncountableA freed slave surname originating as an occupation.
2. countableuncountableA male given name transferred from the surname.
3. A number of places in the United States:
   1. countableuncountableAn unincorporated community in Early County, Georgia.
   2. countableuncountableAn unincorporated community in Kane County, Illinois.
   3. countableuncountableAn unincorporated community in Clay Township, Owen County, Indiana.
   4. countableuncountableA township in Clare County, Michigan.
   5. countableuncountableA township in Freeborn County, Minnesota.
   6. countableuncountableA city in Hutchinson County, South Dakota.
   7. countableuncountableAn unincorporated community in Spokane County, Washington.
   8. countableuncountableA town in Crawford County, Wisconsin.
   9. countableuncountableAn unincorporated community in the town of Langlade, Langlade County, Wisconsin.