2715: freelance May 27, 2024

Anyone who has worked freelance before knows that it entails a lot of spearing people while riding on horseback. Of course, while “free lance” does actually refer to a hired mercenary, it is not a medieval term nor from a time in history where lances or mercenaries were such a dominant military component. Rather, it is coined from a play by Sir Walter Scott in Ivanhoe to denote a soldier not beholden to any lord (i.e. free).

While this began as a noun and was in common use by the mid-19th century, by the start of the 20th century it had changed meanings as a verb and modifier, and the new noun “freelancer” took the spot of being “a freelance” thus removing the word’s original meaning.