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Free lance   /fri læns/   Listen
noun
Lance  n.  
1.
A weapon of war, consisting of a long shaft or handle and a steel blade or head; a spear carried by horsemen, and often decorated with a small flag; also, a spear or harpoon used by whalers and fishermen. "A braver soldier never couched lance."
2.
A soldier armed with a lance; a lancer.
3.
(Founding) A small iron rod which suspends the core of the mold in casting a shell.
4.
(Mil.) An instrument which conveys the charge of a piece of ordnance and forces it home.
5.
(Pyrotech.) One of the small paper cases filled with combustible composition, which mark the outlines of a figure.
6.
(Med.) A lancet.
Free lance, in the Middle Ages, and subsequently, a knight or roving soldier, who was free to engage for any state or commander that purchased his services; hence, a person who assails institutions or opinions on his own responsibility without regard to party lines or deference to authority. See also freelance, n. and a., and freelancer.
Lance bucket (Cavalry), a socket attached to a saddle or stirrup strap, in which to rest the but of a lance.
Lance corporal, same as Lancepesade.
Lance knight, a lansquenet.
Lance snake (Zool.), the fer-de-lance.
Stink-fire lance (Mil.), a kind of fuse filled with a composition which burns with a suffocating odor; used in the counter operations of miners.
To break a lance, to engage in a tilt or contest.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Free lance" Quotes from Famous Books



... or thought he saw, English religion milked for the benefit of Oxford and Cambridge graduates needful of "livings"; and Darwinism and the new sciences generally being swept into the maw of the same professionally intellectual class. A free lance himself, with a table in the British Museum, some books and a deficit instead of an income from his intellectual labors, he attacked the ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... in fact. She allowed it to pass out of the conversation, retaining the pleasant and wholesome attempt to redistribute the Bank's property as at least fit for discussion, and even pardonable—an act due to a mistaken economic theory—redistribution of property by a free lance, not wearing the uniform of a ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... if the older soldier, if the free lance of many a campaign, got the best of it in the long run, the younger freebooter could hardly think himself ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... her former favourite, if he got access to her presence before him; that he had commanded a regiment of infantry under Mountjoy, and that when that regiment was disbanded, he became discontented, not having got either pension or employment; that having gone as a free lance to the Low Countries, and failed to advance himself there as he expected, through the interest of Irish ecclesiastics, he returned to England, and skulked about the ante-chambers of Lord Salisbury, waiting upon Providence, when he hit upon ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... was no more brush or chopping I set Pop to laying stone wall and said I would employ him steadily for a year. But that was a mistake. Old Pop was a free lance, a knight errant. Anything that savored of permanency smelled to him of vassalage. He laid a rod of stone wall—solid wall that will be there for Gabriel to stand on when he plays his last trump—blows it, I mean—in that neighborhood. But then he ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine


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