Word: liberate Part of Speech: verb Etymology: 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. Pronunciation: /ˈlɪbəɹeɪt/, /ˈlɪbəɹɛjt/, /ˈlɪbəˌɹeɪt/, /ˈlɪbəɹet/, /ˈlɪbəˌɹet/ 1. Often followed by from: to allow or cause (someone or something) to be free; to set free, to release. Labels: transitive Example: Thus ſitting and ſurveying thus at eaſe / The globe and its concerns, I ſeem advanced / To ſome ſecure and more than mortal height, / That lib'rates and exempts me from them all. Example: [T]he prisoner being liberate in manner foresaid, it shall not be lawful to put or detain him in prison for the same crime, under the penalty of wrongous imprisonment, […] 2. Often followed by from: to allow or cause (someone or something) to be free; to set free, to release. Labels: transitive Example: You need to free your mind and liberate yourself from prejudice. Example: The moſt ſanguine projector, hovvever, could ſcarce flatter himſelf that any augmentation of this kind [in the form of certain taxes] vvould be ſuch as could give any reaſonable hopes either of liberating the public revenue altogether, or even of making ſuch progress tovvards that liberation in time of peace, as either to prevent or to compenſate the further accumulation of the public debt in the next vvar. 3. Often followed by from: to allow or cause (someone or something) to be free; to set free, to release. Labels: transitive 4. Often followed by from: to allow or cause (someone or something) to be free; to set free, to release. Labels: ironic, sometimes, transitive Example: All your Italian friends must be starving now that we have "liberated" them. Example: I announced that I was leaving with the two-and-a-half filled with with all of the automatic weapons from both camps plus all the plastique explosive, related equipment, and the pistols. They were to be used, I explained, in parts of France where the war was still going on, by Frenchmen who were still fighting to liberate their country from the Germans. 5. Often followed by from: to allow or cause (someone or something) to be free; to set free, to release. Labels: transitive Example: Since the reaction liberates a large amount of chlorine gas, a powerful ventilation system is recommended. 6. To take (property belonging to someone else) by force or theft; to loot, to rob, to steal. Labels: euphemistic, informal, transitive Example: We didn’t need IDs. We just liberated these beers from the back of the shop. Example: All members of the Black Guard must be willing to perform acts of violence before they are nominated. I had proven myself, when I was required to liberate (steal) dynamite, steal cars for robberies, and to perform disciplinary action against party members.