DOUG'S WORD OF THE WEEK

affranchise / uh-FRAN-chyz / verb tr. : 1. To make or set free.

Notes & Etymology: From the Old French franchise, from franche, feminine of franc (free), from Latin francus (free). Franchise and enfranchise are synonyms of this word.

Usage: “A [Greek] slave could buy his liberty: this happened in the rare cases of slaves known as choris oikointes, who had managed to amass a sufficient sum from their labour (two fourth-century bankers, Pasion and Phormion, were former slaves). A slave could also be sold fictitiously to a sanctuary, where the god hastened to affranchise him, a quite common gesture of piety.”
Claude Orrieux, Pauline Schmitt Pantel ; A history of ancient Greece (p.188);1999.