liberate
Often followed by from: to allow or cause to be freeOften followed by from: to allow or cause (someone or something) to be free; to set free, to release.
Meaning
6 senses(transitive)Often followed by from: to allow or cause (someone or something) to be free; to set free, to release.
Often followed by from: to allow or cause (someone or something) to be free; to set free, to release.
(transitive)To free (someone or something) from discriminatory or oppressive attitudes, inhibition, or restraint.
You need to free your mind and liberate yourself from prejudice.
(transitive)To release (someone) from slavery; to manumit.
(ironic, sometimes, transitive)To free (a place such as a country, or the residents thereof) from an occupying force, or from oppression such as unjust rule.
(transitive)To cause (energy or a substance) to be released through a chemical reaction or physical decomposition.
Since the reaction liberates a large amount of chlorine gas, a powerful ventilation system is recommended.
release (gas or energy) as a result of a chemical reaction or physical decomposition
(euphemistic, informal, transitive)To take (property belonging to someone else) by force or theft; to loot, to rob, to steal.
We didn’t need IDs. We just liberated these beers from the back of the shop.
Examples
45 sentencesWe must liberate them.
Ми маємо звільнити їх. — deniko
ruМы должны их освободить. — marafon
deWir müssen sie befreien. — raggione
Tom liberated us.
Том нас звільнив. — deniko
ruТом нас освободил. — marafon
He liberated the people from bondage.
deEr befreite das Volk von seinen Ketten. — MUIRIEL
All the children will be liberated.
Algerians liberated their country from France.
Translations
9 languagesBy meaning 1
By meaning 1
By meaning 1
Origin
Learned borrowing from Latin līberātus (“freed, liberated; absolved, acquitted; released”)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.
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Forms
liberates, liberating, liberated, liberatedSynonyms
18 synonymsAntonyms
5 antonymsWord family
11 related wordsLessons for this word
3 lessons- A1Present simple — Because it is a verb
- A1Past simple, regular verbs — Because of its past form
- A2Present perfect: introduction — Because of its past participle
See also
neighbours in the dictionaryDictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.