free [OE] The adjective free appears in the writings of King Alfred (reigned 871–99) and comes from an ancient root meaning ‘to love’, from which we also get *friend. Freedom is also Old English. The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) wrote, ‘Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains’, while in the 1960s TV series The Prisoner Patrick McGoohan cried ‘I am not a number, I am a free man!’ We now use freelance [E19th] as a term for a self-employed person working for a number of different companies, but in the early 19th century it was written as two words, and used to describe a medieval knight who offered his services as a mercenary. Freemasons [LME] were originally skilled workers in stone who travelled to find employment and had a system of secret signs and passwords that gained them access to work on important building projects. In the 17th century they began to admit honorary members, and membership of their societies or ‘lodges’ became a fashionable status symbol.