Meanings
- not comparableHalfway or partially free.
Yet first, the anonymous rabbis and students begin the sequence of explorations in legality of marriage between half-free people by using more general rules of betrothal.
2015, Ernst van den Hemel, Asja Szafraniec, Words: Religious Language Matters2 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.
2013, Matthew W. Cody, Peter Stuyvesant: Dutch Leader of New Netherland (New York)“Half-free” meant that the slaves themselves were now free, but their children would return to slavery. The Dutch gave a half-free slave named Gratia d'Angola a 10acre farm in the 1640s, centered around what is today one block of Greene Street between Prince Street and Houston Street, in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan.
2014, William Easterly, The Tyranny of ExpertsSynonyms: semifree
Synonyms & antonyms
adjectiveHalfway or partially free.
Origin
- Old Englishhealffrēo“half-free”
- Middle English*half-free
- Englishhalf-free
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”).
More words from Middle English, Old English
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
half-free. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/half-free
“half-free.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/half-free. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “half-free,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/half-free.
Source: half-free on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.