liberation
Americannoun
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liberations
plural
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the act of liberating or the state of being liberated.
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the act or fact of gaining equal rights or full social or economic opportunities for a particular group.
noun
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a liberating or being liberated
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the seeking of equal status or just treatment for or on behalf of any group believed to be discriminated against
women's liberation
animal liberation
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of liberation
First recorded in 1400–50; late Middle English, from Latin līberātiōn-, stem of līberātiō; equivalent to liberate + -ion
Explanation
Liberation means the setting free of someone or something. Wild animals raised in captivity are often unprepared for their liberation when they are released back into the wild. You'll notice right off the bat that liberation is related to the noun liberty — as in "liberty and justice for all." The difference is that liberation refers specifically to the act of being made free, of going from having no freedom to having it. Famous moments of liberation include Europe's liberation from the Nazis, the slaves' liberation from slavery in the U.S., and South Africa's liberation from the oppression of apartheid.
Vocabulary lists containing liberation
Stargirl
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"Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began" by Art Spiegelman
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
When the librarian returned after the village’s liberation, only 4,500 of 16,500 books remained.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 18, 2026
North Korea leader Kim Jong Un and his daughter Kim Ju Ae are pictured on the Financial Times' front page attending a circus performance celebrating the 81st anniversary of Korea's liberation from Japanese rule.
From BBC ● Aug. 18, 2026
That sense of liberation is clearly behind Del Tredici’s “Final Alice,” an hourlong romp around the ending of “Alice in Wonderland” for superhuman soprano and orchestra.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 2, 2026
"This loss is immense, but the path forward continues until liberation."
From Barron's ● May 16, 2026
He had the time and the clarity about suffering to embark on the upward path of liberation, which would take him many lives to follow.
From "Snow Falling on Cedars: A Novel" by David Guterson
Indigenous communities - many disenchanted by years of unmet government promises - have long histories of occupations, which they call liberations.
From Reuters ● Sep. 30, 2022
“Notre-Dame is our history, our literature, part of our psyche, the place of all our great events, our epidemics, our wars, our liberations, the epicenter of our lives,” he said.
From Fox News ● Apr. 16, 2019
“The place of all our great events, our epidemics, our wars, our liberations, the epicenter of our lives.”
From Washington Post ● Apr. 15, 2019
The head medic, Naseem Qasim, a thirty-three-year-old major with a master’s degree in microbiology, had served with the 9th Division throughout the liberations of Ramadi and Falluja, where he’d been shot in the hip.
From The New Yorker ● Jan. 29, 2017
The civil liberations which were the great crises of the western world from 1640 to 1830 appear now to many as deprived of their fruit.
From An Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant by Edward Caldwell Moore
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
