Carefree

How to spell carefree

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce carefree

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does carefree mean?

1. adjectiveFree from worry, responsibility, or trouble; light-hearted and untroubled.

Carefree in a sentence

• After clearing the last of her debts she felt completely carefree.

• The long summer holiday gave the children a carefree stretch of days.

Where does carefree come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English compound built from two very old Germanic words. The first part, 'care', descends from the Old English 'caru' or 'cearu', which did not originally mean attentive looking-after at all; it meant sorrow, grief, and anxiety, the heavy weight of worry on the mind. The second part, 'free', comes from the Old English 'freo', meaning unbound or at liberty, and as a word-ending '-free' came to signal the complete absence of something, as in 'painfree' or 'duty-free'. Joined together, 'carefree' literally describes someone free of worry, and the modern cheerful sense grew directly out of that original burdensome meaning of 'care'. The spelling is mercifully transparent, since both halves are spelled exactly as they stand alone, with no doubled or dropped letters where the two words meet.

How the word is built

• care (worry, anxiety)
• -free (without, lacking)