Emancipation

How to spell emancipation

12 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce emancipation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does emancipation mean?

1. nounThe act of setting someone free from legal, social, or political restriction or control.

Emancipation in a sentence

• The museum exhibit traced the long road to emancipation for enslaved people.

• Reaching adulthood gave her legal emancipation from her guardian.

Where does emancipation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word goes back to the Latin verb emancipare, which meant to release a person from legal control. It was built from the prefix ex- ('out, away'), plus mancipium, a Roman legal term for formal ownership; that word itself joined manus ('hand') and capere ('to take'), because Roman property was transferred by a ritual in which the buyer literally took hold of the goods with the hand. In Roman law emancipatio specifically described a father freeing a grown son from the patria potestas, the sweeping legal authority a father held over his household. English adopted the word in the early 1600s, and over the following centuries it broadened to mean freeing any group from slavery, servitude, or restriction, most famously in the abolition of slavery. The buried 'cip' that trips up spellers is the same hand-taking capere root found in 'capture' and 'participate', which is a useful clue that it takes a c rather than an s.

How the word is built

• e- (from ex-: out, away)
• man (from manus: hand)
• cip (from capere: to take)
• -ation (noun of action)