free love
free love noun: the practice of sexual intercourse without the restraints of marriage or commitment.
Noun
free love (uncountable)
- The practice of sexual intercourse without the restraints of marriage or commitment.
- The deceased, Philip Boyes, was, as you have heard, a writer. He was thirty-six years old, and he had published five novels and a large number of essays and articles. All these literary works were of what is sometimes called an ‘advanced’ type. They preached doctrines which may seem to some of us...1930, Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison
- Joseph’s looks and handsome figure had attracted her attention. Every morning she would beckon: “Come and lie with me, love.” Joseph wanted to resist her til one day she proved too eager. Joseph cried in vain: “Please stop! I don’t believe in free love!”1974, “Potiphar”, in Tim Rice (lyrics), Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Examples of free love in a sentence
- They preached doctrines which may seem to some of us immoral or seditious, such as atheism, and anarchy, and what is known as free love.1930, Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison:
- Sometimes prudish and sometimes outrageous, Marilyn rationalized her behavior through free love ideas.2012, Lois Banner, Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox, page 262:
Questions about free love
- What does free love mean?
- Free love means the practice of sexual intercourse without the restraints of marriage or commitment.
- How do you use free love in a sentence?
- They preached doctrines which may seem to some of us immoral or seditious, such as atheism, and anarchy, and what is known as free love.
- What part of speech is free love?
- Free love is a noun.
Words near free love in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: free love (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-free love.wav.
Cite this entry: “free love.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/free_love. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.