Liberating

How to spell liberating

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce liberating

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does liberating mean?

1. adjectiveProducing a strong sense of freedom or release from limits, duties, or worries.
2. verbPresent participle of liberate: the act of setting someone or something free.

Liberating in a sentence

• adjective

  Quitting the job she hated felt strangely liberating.

• verb

  The troops were credited with liberating the occupied villages.

• adjective

  There was something liberating about clearing the clutter from the entire house.

• verb

  The charity is focused on liberating children from forced labour.

Where does liberating come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin adjective liber, which meant 'free' in the sense of not being a slave or being unconstrained, and gave rise to the verb liberare, meaning 'to set free' or 'to release'. The past participle of that verb, liberatus, fed into English through the noun and verb forms in the early 1600s, when 'liberate' came to mean to release someone from bondage, captivity, or restraint. The present participle 'liberating' simply adds the active -ing ending, describing something that frees or has the effect of freeing. The very same liber root sits behind the everyday words 'liberty', 'liberal', and 'deliver', all of which carry a sense of release or freedom. Because the unstressed middle vowel is a faint schwa, writers sometimes hesitate over whether it is spelled 'liber' rather than 'liber-', but the link to 'liberty' keeps the spelling steady.

How the word is built

• liber- (from Latin liber: free)
• -ate (verb suffix)
• -ing (present participle suffix)