manumit

English

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin manūmittere, from pre-Classical Latin manū ēmittere (literally “send out from one’s hand”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /mænjʊˈmɪt/

Verb

manumit (third-person singular simple present manumits, present participle manumitting, simple past and past participle manumitted)

1. To release from slavery, to free.

   Synonyms: emancipate, liberate

   • 1610 (first performance), Ben[jamin] Jonson, The Alchemist, London: […] Thomas Snodham, for Walter Burre, and are to be sold by Iohn Stepneth, […], published 1612, →OCLC; reprinted Menston, Yorkshire: The Scolar Press, 1970, →OCLC, Act II, scene ii:

     […] Lungs, I will manumit thee from the Fornace; / I will reſtore thee thy complexion, Puffe, / Lost in the embers; and repayre this brayne, / Hurt with the fume o'the Mettalls.

   • 1842 February 22, Abraham Lincoln, “Address Before the Springfield Washingtonian Temperance Society”, in Arthur Brooks Lapsley, editor, The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln‎^[1]:

     Turn now to the temperance revolution. In it we shall find a stronger bondage broken, a viler slavery manumitted, a greater tyrant deposed; in it, more of want supplied, more disease healed, more sorrow assuaged.

   • 1867, John Lord, The Old Roman World: the Grandeur and Failure of Its Civilization‎^[2]:

     Persons taken in war were considered at the absolute control of their captors, and were therefore, de facto, slaves; and the children of a female slave followed the condition of their mother, and belonged to her master. But masters could manumit their slaves, who thus became Roman citizens, with some restrictions.

   • 1985, Anthony Burgess, Kingdom of the Wicked, Arbor House Publishing:

     Ruth wept much but Sara set her beauty to a fierce grimness which, even when, as you shall hear later, she was manumitted, she never entirely lost.

Derived terms

• manumitter

Related terms

• manumission
• mission

Translations

Translations

• Catalan: manumetre (ca)
• Finnish: vapauttaa (fi)
• French: manumission (fr), affranchissement (fr)
• German: freisprechen (de), freilassen (de)
• Hungarian: felszabadít (hu)
• Italian: emancipare (it), affrancare (it), liberare (it)
• Russian: освобожда́ть (ru) (osvoboždátʹ), отпуска́ть (ru) (otpuskátʹ)
• Spanish: manumisión, liberación (es)