emancipate

Definition

To set free (a person or group) from the oppression or restraint of another; to liberate.

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin ēmancipātus (“liberated, emancipated”) + English -ate (suffix forming verbs, and adjectives with the sense ‘characterized by the specified thing’). Ēmancipātus is the perfect passive participle of ēmancipō (“to declare (someone) free and independent of another’s power, emancipate; to give (something) from one’s authority or power into that of another, to alienate, transfer; to cause (oneself or someone) to become another’s slave; to make (someone) subservient”), from ē- (a variant of ex- (prefix meaning ‘away; out’)) + mancipō (“to sell; to transfer”) (from manceps (“owner, possessor; purchaser; etc.”) + -ō (suffix forming infinitives of first-conjugation verbs)); and manceps is from Proto-Italic *manukaps, from *manus (“hand”) (possibly from Proto-Indo-European *(s)meh₂- (“to beckon; to signal”)) + *-kaps (suffix denoting a catcher) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kap- (“to grab, seize; to hold”); referring to one who catches something in the hand). The verb emancipate has verb sense 1.1 (“to set free”) and verb sense 1.3 (“(obsolete) to place under one’s control”) which are contradictory. The Latin word ēmancipō had the same senses, and the Oxford English Dictionary notes that according to the Latin grammarian Paulus Festus (fl. 8th century) this is because both actions were effected by the legal process of mancipation.

Example Sentences

• "[T]his was his [God's] first work,to redeem, to vindicate them from the usurper, to deliver them from the intruder, to emancipate them from the tyrant, to cancel the covenant between hell and them, and restore them. so far to their liberty, as that they might come to their first Master if they would: this was redeeming."
• "Enlightened ministers like Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein and Karl August von Hardenberg enacted a comprehensive series of domestic reforms. They transformed backward, semifeudal Prussia into a modern state: abolishing serfdom, granting self-government to towns, with elected town councils replacing royal appointees; and formally emancipating the Jews, granting them full citizenship for the first time, even if full social acceptance remained wanting."
• "to emancipate a colony"

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