free love

American  

noun

1. the doctrine or practice of having sexual relations or living together without legal marriage or continuing obligation.

---

free love British  

noun

1. the practice of sexual relationships without fidelity to a single partner or without formal or legal ties

---

Etymology

Origin of free love

First recorded in 1815–25

Example Sentences

The colony, The Times wrote, believes it can solve “without socialism, free love, and other vagaries of theorists, the ideal conditions of human life and association.”

From Los Angeles Times

In the late 1950s in New York City, a group of therapists founded the Sullivan Institute, which promoted free love and communal living and attracted hundreds of followers, including the painter Jackson Pollock.

From New York Times

“An Assassin in Utopia” links President James Garfield’s killer to an atmosphere of free love and religious fervor that gripped Oneida, N.Y., in the late 1800s.

From New York Times

The free love script stands in the 2,000-year-old history of what scholars call antinomianism in Christian thought.

From Salon

For the Romantics, as we see in detail, free thinking and free love were inseparable, and the personal consequences were often excruciating.

From Washington Post