Free of vs. Free from - English Language Usage Stack Exchange If so, my analysis amounts to a rule in search of actual usage—a prescription rather than a description In any event, the impressive rise of "free of" against "free from" over the past 100 years suggests that the English-speaking world has become more receptive to using "free of" in place of "free from" during that period
Why does free have 2 meanings? (Gratis and Libre) 1 ' Free ' absolutely means 'free from any sorts constraints or controls The context determines its different denotations, if any, as in 'free press', 'fee speech', 'free stuff' etc
For free vs. free of charges [duplicate] - English Language Usage . . . I don't think there's any difference in meaning, although "free of charges" is much less common than "free of charge" Regarding your second question about context: given that English normally likes to adopt the shortest phrasing possible, the longer form "free of charge" can be used as a means of drawing attention to the lack of demand for
etymology - Origin of the phrase free, white, and twenty-one . . . The fact that it was well-established long before OP's 1930s movies is attested by this sentence in the Transactions of the Annual Meeting from the South Carolina Bar Association, 1886 And to-day, “free white and twenty-one,” that slang phrase, is no longer broad enough to include the voters in this country