free-willer

Noun

free-willer (plural free-willers)

1. A person who believes that human beings have free will.
   • […] most of us are “free-willers.” We automatically assume we can shape the future, including our technology, in almost any fashion we wish, at least within the constraints of the natural environment. A small but vocal school of determinists, however, argues that we delude ourselves.1975, Andrew McClary, chapter 16, in Biology and Society: The Evolution of Man and His Technology, New York: Macmillan, pages 225–226
   • Causality and determinism, in a quantum framework, persist down to the very shortest distances that experiments have been performed in high-energy particle accelerators. I see no way that a person could employ forces above (or even approximately near) what are achieved in those gigantic particle...2006, John Taylor: The Mind: A User’s Manual, Chichester: John Wiley, Part 3, Chapter 18, p. 205

   Antonyms:

   determinist

2. A person who exercises free will.
   • The Americans are free-willers, fussy, self-asserting, buzzing all round creation.1847, Ralph Waldo Emerson, journal entry dated May 1847, in Stephen E. Whicher (ed.), Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson: An Organic Anthology, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957, p. 310
   • […] the saviour is no longer the volition of the full-grown spirit of Man, the Free Willer of Necessity, sword in hand, but simply Love […]1902 [1898], [George] Bernard Shaw, “Forgotten ere finished”, in The Perfect Wagnerite […] , second edition, London: Grant Richards, page 95
3. (derogatory, historical) A person belonging to a sect that rejected the doctrine of predestination.
   • Since all are by nature alike children of wrath, I would know of these free-willers, how some become the children of God, & beleevers, & some abyde vnder the wrath of God?1614, John Robinson, Of Religious Communion Private, & Publique, “Of the Baptism of Infants,” p. 96[a]
   • And is it not then a horrid shame, to hear honest people so seduced into Love-killing factious sidings by their Teachers, as that Boys and Women speak of wiser and better persons with disaffection and reproach, saying, O he is a Free-willer, or he holdeth Free-will, when they know not what they...1675, Richard Baxter, Richard Baxter’s Catholick Theologie, London: Nevill Simmons, “Of Natural Corruption and Impotency, and Free-will,” The third Crimination, p. 125

   Synonyms:

   Arminian, Pelagian, Remonstrant, Semipelagian

   Antonyms:

   Calvinist, predestinarian

4. (US, historical) An immigrant to the United States who, upon arrival, voluntarily became an indentured servant.
   • Persons in a state of servitude are under four distinct denominations: negroes, who are the entire property of their respective owners: convicts, who are transported from the mother country for a limited term: indented servants, who are engaged for five years previous to their leaving England; and...1770, William Eddis, letter dated 20 September, 1770 in Letters from America, Historical and Descriptive, comprising occurrences from 1769, to 1777, inclusive, London: for the author, 1792, pp. 63-64
   • There were two kinds of redemptioners—‘indented servants,’ who had bound themselves to their masters for a term of years previous to leaving Europe, and ‘free-willers,’ who allowed themselves to be sold on arrival to defray the cost of passage to America.1887, Francis Fontaine, chapter 41, in Etowah: A Romance of the Confederacy, Atlanta, page 483

   Synonyms:

   redemptioner