Dictionary

unfreedom en · NOUN

Etymology

From Middle English unfredom, equivalent to un- + freedom.

Meanings

1. (uncountable) The condition of being unfree.
   • 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:
   • 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:
   • 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:
   • 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. Any living human being, by contrast, is someone to whom freedom and unfreedom can pertinently be attributed. 2003, Matthew H[enry] Kramer, “Freedom and Force”, in The Quality of Freedom, Oxford, Oxfordshire; New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, published 2008, →ISBN, chapter 3 (Instances of Freedom), page 254:
2. (countable) 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:

Forms

Antonyms

freedom

Synonyms

slavery · restriction · illiberty

Translations (3)

is ófrelsi (the condition of being unfree) · de Unfreiheit (the condition of being unfree) · pt iliberdade (the condition of being unfree)