12 October 2020
A freelancer is someone who offers their services for hire, someone who is not a permanent employee of a company. The word, as one might suspect, is a metaphor for a medieval mercenary, a knight who will fight under the banner of whoever pays him. But the word is not actually a medieval one but rather arose in nineteenth-century romantic tales of medieval chivalry. The noun follows a rather standard trajectory, at first used literally, then figuratively, then becoming a verb, and finally to taking an -er ending to differentiate the person from the action.
Freelance, in the sense of a mercenary, appears in Walter Scott’s 1819 novel Ivanhoe, set in twelfth-century England:
I offered Richard the service of my Free Lances, and he refused them. I will lead them to Hull, seize on shipping, and embark for Flanders. Thanks to the bustling times, a man of action will always find employment.
Within a few decades, freelance started to be used figuratively, at first in the realm of politics to refer to politicians who ignored or resisted party discipline. From the Hertford Mercury of 8 March 1851:
Better, then, it must be to hold to men who may be willing to take a lesson from the past, than to be the mercy of Protectionists—whether changed or unchanged;—of Jesuitical optimists, whose political creed runs, “Whatever is, is right;”—or of those free lances of Radicalism, who never having tasted the sweets of power, might prove unmanageable in the career of their early temptations.
The verb to freelance appears in the 1880s. From a 29 October 1881 article in the Wheeling Register of West Virginia about Cornelius Vanderbilt undercutting the prices of other railroads until they agree to join a cartel and fix prices:
Later it was said that Vanderbilt would not be influenced by the addition of these companies, but would continue to free lance until all other trunk lines agree to the abolishment of the differential rates.
And freelancer appears by the end of the nineteenth century, with the -er distinguishing the actor from the act. Again, from the realm of politics, there is this sub-headline about Liberal opposition backbenchers ignoring their party’s leadership in a Sheffield, England paper from 8 August 1895:
The Freelancer and the Opposition.
So, like much of present-day perceptions of the medieval era, freelance is more fantasy than history.
Sources:
“Buying and Selling.” Wheeling Register (West Virginia), 26 October 1881, 1. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“Contemporary Gossip.” Evening Telegraph and Star and Sheffield Daily Times, 8 August 1895, 2. Gale News Vault.
“Original Correspondence.” The Hertford Mercury, 8 March 1851, 2. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2008, s.v. freelance, n., adj., and adv.; freelance, v.; freelancer, n.
Scott, Walter. Ivanhoe (1819). London: Cassell. 280. HathiTrust Digital Archive.