on the loose

Prepositional phrase

1. (idiomatic) Not incarcerated or in captivity; not under control.
   • Went to a bongo party completely by mistake / there were coons and thugs and fat sheboons with all the pavement apes / When I got to the bongo party, it smelled of jenkem juice / someone left the cave door open, there were chimps on the loose.2022 April 19, Skeeter, “Biden Admin To Fund Crack Pipe Distribution To Advance ?Racial Equity?”, in rec.sport.pro-wrestling (Usenet)
2. (archaic, slang) Out on a spree, or in search of adventure.
   • Sometimes he dispensed water to men who “looked as if they had been on the loose all night.”1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, published 1861

   Synonyms:

   on the run, on the lam

3. (archaic, slang) Earning a living by prostitution.
   • Those who have had good nursing, and all that, and the advantages of a sound education, who have a position to lose, prospects to blight, and relations to dishonour, may be blamed for going on the loose, but I’ll be hanged if I think that priest or moralist is to come down on me with the...1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, published 1861
   • Many doctors practising in large cities dwell on the difficulty of checking clandestine prostitution, which is unfortunately on the increase in all crowded centres, where numbers of women are on the loose, over whom the police have little or no hold.1868, The Indian Medical Gazette, volume 3, page 21