libertine

In ancient Rome, a libertus was not simply “free” in the abstract: he was a real person who had been released from slavery, though the old master might still remain his patron. Latin libertinus described that freedman’s status, and English borrowed the word in the late 14th century for “a freedman.” Then the word took a sharp turn. In the 1560s, libertine could mean a freethinker, partly through French libertin, a label applied to pantheistic Protestant groups in France and the Low Countries; by the 1590s, it had darkened into “a person given to lust,” perhaps because readers misunderstood the biblical Latin context of Acts 6:9. So libertine carries a miniature social drama: liberation first, intellectual independence next, and finally freedom’s disreputable cousin—license.