Lib

How to spell lib

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce lib

What does lib mean?

1. nounAn informal short form of 'liberation', used especially in the names of social movements.

Lib in a sentence

• The documentary traced the history of women's lib from the 1960s onward.

• Her grandmother had marched for gay lib as a student.

Where does lib come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This short word is a clipping of longer words built on the Latin liber, which meant 'free' and originally described a person who was not a slave. From liber the Romans formed libertas ('freedom') and the verb liberare ('to set free'), which passed through Old French into the English words liberty, liberate and liberal. The informal abbreviation 'lib' rose to prominence in the late twentieth century, especially in the slogan 'women's lib' for the women's liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s. In more recent and chiefly American political slang it is also a clipped, often dismissive label for a liberal. Because it is simply the first three letters of a much longer family of words, the spelling holds no surprises, though writers sometimes wonder whether it should carry an apostrophe; it does not.

How the word is built

• clipped form of liber- (root of liberation / liberal, from Latin liber: free)