Skip to main content
unfree

unfree

2 6.1
Not free because someone else controls your life or choices
  • adjective
  • /ʌnˈfriː/
translation icon : no libre
  • Most importantly, so long as its consciousness was imposed from without, the working class remained intellectually dominated and thus unfree.

Most of our lives are spent in unfree workplaces.

Autoplay Next

Examples

  • A country where the government controls the capital markets tends to have a very unfree economy.

    Blog text (34)
  • The remaining 80 percent were divided about equally between the partly free and the decidedly unfree states.

    Academic text (1997)
  • How can African women be absolutely free in such an unfree environment?

  • Most of our lives are spent in unfree workplaces.

  • North America taught the world that free people will prevail over less or completely unfree peoples.

    Blog text (32)
  • In a major speech in January 2010, Clinton drew analogies between the Iron Curtain and the free and unfree Internet.

    Blog text (30)
  • The pie chart for the Middle East/North Africa—the core Islamic region—shows the most unfree area in the world.

    Blog text (25)
  • Many citizens advocate for democracy because they feel trapped in an unfree society.

  • In an unfree state, people often lack basic rights and freedoms.

  • The workers protested against the unfree conditions imposed by their employer.

Synonyms

unemancipated
vsunfree
1 9.1

A person who is still under another person's legal control, for example a child

is generally controlled or lacks freedom of action or choice
unliberated
vsunfree
7.1

A place that an enemy still controls

is lacking freedom of action or choice without implying oppression

Antonyms

1.0

Able to live without being owned or controlled by other people

1.0

Able to act as you want without limits

24 4.1

Free from limits and control, it allows people to use or access

How Unfree

oppressed
4.7
unfree
2 6.1
restricted
18 3.9
limited
97 1.9

Surface Forms

unfree positive

Morphology

unfree = free (transparent) = un + free

Standard negation with the productive English prefix 'un-' applied to 'free', giving the straightforward meaning 'not free'.

Etymology

Unfree is made of the parts un- meaning 'not' and free meaning 'able to act or go where you want' or 'not controlled'. So unfree means 'not free', controlled by someone else or without choice.