unfreedom
unfreedom noun: the condition of being unfree.
Noun
unfreedom (countable and uncountable, plural unfreedoms)
- The condition of being unfree.
- A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrial civilization, a token of technical progress.1964, Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man […] , Boston: Beacon Press, page 1
- It was as if all the unfreedom in which he'd spent his seven decades of life were embodied in this six-year-old but essentially brand-new chair.2001, Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections
- A particular limitation of one's freedom.
- Perhaps most notably, our enquiries into the existence of unfreedoms are steps toward the measurement of the overall freedom of each individual and of each society.2003, Matthew H. Kramer, The Quality of Freedom, →ISBN, page 340
- Synonyms:
- restriction
Examples of unfreedom in a sentence
- We feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.2002, Slavoj Žižek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real, →ISBN, page 2:
- [T]he overall freedom of a corpse is nil because a corpse is not someone to whom social and political liberty (or unfreedom) can ever correctly be ascribed.2003, Matthew H[enry] Kramer, “Freedom and Force”, in The Quality of Freedom, Oxford, Oxfordshire; New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press...
- She is her father's daughter in a way that has finally brought her back to unfreedom . . . the last misfortune bequeathed to her by the terrible man who was her father.2015, Rosemary Sullivan, Stalin's Daughter, →ISBN, page 528:
Synonyms of unfreedom
Antonyms
Forms of unfreedom
| plural | unfreedoms |
|---|
Origin of unfreedom
From Middle English unfredom, equivalent to un- + freedom.
Questions about unfreedom
- What does unfreedom mean?
- Unfreedom means the condition of being unfree.
- How do you use unfreedom in a sentence?
- We feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.
- What part of speech is unfreedom?
- Unfreedom is a noun.
- What is the plural of unfreedom?
- The plural of unfreedom is unfreedoms.
Words near unfreedom in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: unfreedom (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “unfreedom.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/unfreedom. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.