liberal

Forms

1.Generous; permitting liberty; willing to give unsparingly.
- He was liberal with his compliments.
- Was it because the believers were so liberal with their possessions that God was so liberal with his grace?
- When he shows improvement she is liberal with her praise and then moves on to the next set of skills to be learnt.
2.Ample, abundant; generous in quantity.
- Add a liberal sprinkling of salt.
- The result was usually that such helpers got a liberal sprinkling of mud over their clothing.
- Rose put a steaming cup of mint tea in front of me and spooned a liberal helping of honey into it.
3.Widely open to new ideas, willing to depart from established opinions or conventions; permissive.
- Her parents had liberal ideas about child-rearing.
4.Pertaining to a type of education the purpose of which is personal development rather than functional learning.
- He had a full education studying the liberal arts.

1.Someone with progressive or left-wing views, especially on social and environmental issues.
2.One with liberal views, supporting individual liberty (see Wikipedia's article on Liberalism).
3.A supporter of any of several liberal parties.
4.One who favors individual voting rights, human and civil rights, and laissez-faire markets (also called "classical liberal"; compare libertarian).

Uncommon· #2001

The adjective is from Old French liberal, from Latin līberālis (“befitting a freeman”), from līber (“free”); it is attested since the 14th century.

The noun is first attested in the 1800s.