emancipate

Etymology

First recorded in the 1620s,^[1][2] borrowed from Latin ēmancipātus, past participle of Latin ēmancipāre,^[1][3] from ē- “out” + mancipium “ownership”,^[4][1] itself from manus “hand” + capere “to take”.^[1][2]

In Roman law the verb meant to release a son or wife from the legal authority of the head of the family;^[1] it was not used of freeing slaves, for which the verb was manumittere.^[1] In English it was taken up by the cause of religious toleration in the 17th century and of anti-slavery from 1776.^[1]

References

1. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] Harper, Douglas, Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
2. [1] [2] Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
3. [1] Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. [1] The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Boston: Houghton Mifflin