emancipate

verb

1. (transitive)To set free (a person or group) from the oppression or restraint of another; to liberate.

   “[T]his was his [God's] first work,to redeem, to vindicate them from the usurper, to deliver them from the intruder, to emancipate them from the tyrant, to cancel the covenant between hell and them, and restore them. so far to their liberty, as that they might come to their first Master if they would: this was redeeming.”

   “Enlightened ministers like Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein and Karl August von Hardenberg enacted a comprehensive series of domestic reforms. They transformed backward, semifeudal Prussia into a modern state: abolishing serfdom, granting self-government to towns, with elected town councils replacing royal appointees; and formally emancipating the Jews, granting them full citizenship for the first time, even if full social acceptance remained wanting.”

2. (transitive)To set free (a person or group) from the oppression or restraint of another; to liberate.

   “to emancipate a colony”

   “Abundant harvests and patient industry amply supplied the wants of Presidio and Mission. Isolated from the family of nations, the wars which shook the world concerned them not so much as the last earthquake; the struggle that emancipated their sister colonies on the other side of the continent to them had no suggestiveness.”

3. (also, reflexive, transitive)To set free (a person or group) from the oppression or restraint of another; to liberate.

   “to pass a law emancipating slaves”

   “The number of prisoners whom [George] Jeffreys transported was eight hundred and forty-one. These men, more wretched than their associates who suffered death, were distributed into gangs, and bestowed on persons who enjoyed favour at court. The conditions of the gift were that the convicts should be carried beyond sea as slaves, that they should not be emancipated for ten years, and that the place of their banishment should be some West Indian island.”

   “Into this house he brought Eliza; and, on condition of her living with him, she and her children were to be emancipated. She resided with him there nine years, with servants to attend upon her, and provided with every comfort and luxury of life.”

   “Then the long-headed man with care-chiselled face who sat in the White House [Abraham Lincoln] saw the inevitable, and emancipated the slaves of rebels on New Year's, 1863.”

4. (transitive)To set free (a person or group) from the oppression or restraint of another; to liberate.

   “The child was emancipated from her parents”

   “[I]f his [the paterfamilias'] wife had not passed in manum—and that was common enough even during the republic and universal in the later empire—she did not become a member of his family; she remained a member of the family in which she was born, or, if its head was deceased, or she had been emancipated, was the sole member of a family of her own. Both sons and daughters on emancipation ceased to be of the family of the paterfamilias who had emancipated them.”

   “Enlistment for active duty with a branch of the armed forces emancipates a minor. In many jurisdictions this emancipation only lasts during the period of active service.”

   “When I was fourteen, I was emancipated by the courts. It's no secret that I had to part ways from my mother because we had driven our relationship into the ground.”

5. (also, figuratively, reflexive, transitive)Often followed by from: to free (oneself or someone, or something) from some constraint or controlling influence (especially when evil or undue); also, to free (oneself or someone) from mental oppression.

   “Education can emancipate us from error or prejudices.”

   “The vvhole Epiſtle deſerves the Reading, for the excellent Advice he gives on this and other Subjects; and hovv from many troubleſome and ſlaviſh Impertinencies, grovvn into Habit and Cuſtom (old as he vvas) he had Emancipated and freed himſelf: […]”

   “And it is on all Hands agreed that there is need of great Toil and Labour of the Mind, to Emancipate our Thoughts from particular Objects, and raiſe them to thoſe Sublime Speculations that are converſant about abſtract Ideas.”

   “At all events, from that day I was emancipated from modern Puritanism.”

   “Thou [God] emancipatest and restorest the poor sinner by the finished work of Thy Beloved Son [Jesus].”

6. (obsolete, transitive)To place (something) under one's control; specifically (chiefly reflexive), to cause (oneself or someone) to become the slave of another person; to enslave; also, to subjugate (oneself or someone).

   “He that vvill ſinne vnto death, or ſinne ſo farre as to put himſelfe into the ſtate of damnation; muſt ſinne ſo farre, as vtterly to ſeparate, and cut off himſelfe from Chriſt, vtterly to extirpate all the ſeeds and habits of true and ſauing grace vvhich are vvithin him, and vvholly to emancipate and inthrall himſelfe to the ſeruice of ſinne and Sathan: […]”

7. (intransitive, obsolete)To become free from the oppression or restraint of another.

   “We shall hardly induce black men to believe that if their stomachs be full, it matters little about their brains. They already dimly perceive that the paths of peace winding between honest toil and dignified manhood call for the guidance of skilled thinkers, the loving, reverent comradeship between the black lowly and the black men emancipated by training and culture.”

adj

1. Synonym of emancipated (“having been set free from someone's control, or from some constraint; at liberty, free”).

   “For I doe take the conſideration in generall, and at large of hvmane natvre to be fit to be emancipate, & made a knovvledge by it ſelf; […]”

   “VVe have no ſlaves at home.—Then vvhy abroad? / And they themſelves once ferried o'er the vvave / That parts us, are emancipate and loos'd.”

   “This be thy chosen haunt—emancipate / From passion's dreams, a freeman, and alone, / I rise and trace its devious course.”