FREE WILL

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does free will mean? 

• FREE WILL (noun)
  The noun FREE WILL has 1 sense:

1. the power of making free choices unconstrained by external agencies

  Familiarity information: FREE WILL used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• FREE WILL (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The power of making free choices unconstrained by external agencies

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

discretion; free will

Hypernyms ("free will" is a kind of...):

power; powerfulness (possession of controlling influence)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "free will"):

self-determination (determination of one's own fate or course of action without compulsion)

 Context examples 

He certainly would not leave them of his own free will.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I said this almost involuntarily, and, with as little sanction of free will, my tears gushed out.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

"Is all this of your own free will?" he demanded.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

If you cannot keep me after what has passed, then for God’s sake let me give you notice and leave in a month, as if of my own free will.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Either the boy was carried off by force or he went of his own free will.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

And so also, when the ring has become as extinct as the lists, we may understand that a broader philosophy would show that all things, which spring up so naturally and spontaneously, have a function to fulfil, and that it is a less evil that two men should, of their own free will, fight until they can fight no more than that the standard of hardihood and endurance should run the slightest risk of being lowered in a nation which depends so largely upon the individual qualities of her citizens for her defence.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

As it stands, not one farthing shall you have with my free will, and when I see my brother, the Socman of Minstead, he will raise hue and cry from vill to vill, from hundred to hundred, until you are taken as a common robber and a scourge to the country.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It is of my own free will. You have disgraced me so that I am ashamed to meet my friends. They are all talking about me, I know.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)