Liberal

How to spell liberal

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce liberal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does liberal mean?

1. adjectiveOpen to new ideas and behaviour, or giving generously and in large amounts.
2. adjectiveRelating to a political outlook that favours individual freedom, reform, and tolerance.

Liberal in a sentence

• The recipe calls for a liberal amount of butter.

• The newspaper is known for its liberal editorial stance.

• Their parents took a liberal approach to bedtimes and screen time.

• She holds fairly liberal views on social policy.

Where does liberal come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin liberalis, which meant 'befitting a free person' or 'gentlemanly', built on the noun liber, meaning 'free'. In the Roman world a 'liberal' education, the artes liberales, was the body of study thought suitable for a free citizen rather than for a labourer or slave, and that sense survives in the modern phrase 'liberal arts'. English took the word through Old French during the 1300s, when it carried the idea of openhandedness and generosity, the qualities expected of a free and well born person. Over the following centuries the meaning broadened to include being open-minded and tolerant, and by the early 1800s it had acquired its political sense of favouring individual freedom and reform. The same liber root sits inside 'liberty' and 'liberate', and keeping that 'liber' in mind helps fix the single 'b' and the -er- in the spelling.

How the word is built

• liber- (from Latin liber: free)
• -al (adjective/noun suffix)