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RSSFree Rein or Free Reign?
This from laura Killian:
I have found examples of two spellings of the expression : to give free rein / reign to sb / sth. I assume that ‘rein’ is the correct spelling, as in loosening the reins of a horse. But has there been enough contamination through the idea of reigning or ruling that both are accepted now? Do you know the history of this expression?
The spelling “reign” in this expression is an example of the triumph of folk etymology over origin.
The expression to give free rein to is figurative. It means to give a person freedom to act on his own authority. It derives from an equestrian term:
free rein – a rein held loosely to allow a horse free motion; the freedom that this gives a horse. (OED)
The word rein derives from a word meaning “a bond, check” from a verb meaning “to hold back. It’s related to retain.
The word reign derives from a Latin word for kingship. To reign means to exercise the power of a king. The sense of this “reign” has become conflated with the expression “to give free rein to.”
The confusion has become so complete that it’s beyond correction.
A Google search for “free reign” brought 5,010,000 hits, including references to a rock group and a religious ministries site.
A search for “free rein” garnered only 806,000 hits.
I shall continue to write free rein, but “free reign” is here to stay.
ADDENDUM
Reader David Duberman takes exception to my Google search results:
Which Google are you searching? There’s only one that I know of, and my results with it are markedly different from yours. You are using quotes in your search phrase, aren’t you? You do realize that not using quotes yields results that have the two words on the same page, but not necessarily next to each other, don’t you?
Results 1 – 10 of about 1,230,000 for “free rein”
Results 1 – 10 of about 940,000 for “free reign”.
I suggest issuing a retraction.
I must plead guilty to not using quotation marks in my search for free rein and free reign.
But I’ve got to ask David which Google search he’s using! I don’t claim to be very tech savvy so I may still be doing something wrong. My new search with the quotation marks yielded these results:
“free rein” 681,000
“free reign” 531,000
Either way, free rein wins. Which is great in my book.
However, Google searches can reflect trends in usage and usage drives acceptance.
Everybody have a look at this video clip in the ABC NEWS archives for October 16, 2007 and see what the OED lexicographers have already decided about free rein vs free reign.
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I see this mistake all the time and it drives me nuts. Free rein is correct, because the phrase is derived from equestrianism. It has nothing to do with ruling anything. The Google consensus is depressing, though no indication of correctness. You would probably find millions of incidences of greengrocer’s apostrophe, if only there was a way to google for that, and that will never be correct.
Thanks for the useful info. It’s so interesting
Thank you, Dirtywhitecandy, for pointing that out.
I like this site a lot, but I am often grinding my teeth when I read “well, looking at Google, we have 5,000,000,000 hits with this spelling, so …”
Just because a majority of people on the internet cannot spell or cannot be bothered to spell, does still not make the writing of the word any more correct. :-/ Gaaaah.
We all make typos and mistakes, especially in this fast medium. But to me, as an editor, a lot of what I see on the internet looks simply as if the author of the text does not care for it at all. I know that editors have the professional hazard of looking at texts too critically, but still …
I am also jaded from playing SL and chatting. I used to think that I as a non-native speaker could not keep up. But what I have seen over the past three years in writing from American and British players honestly knocked me out of my socks. (And “rein”/”reign” is a good example.)
And not only in the quick-online writing, where you slam out sentences to keep up with a scene, but also in their short stories that they uploaded to a social network site we share.
If you had the same kind of spelling (and punctuation, by the way) as a German kid, your grades would plummet, unless you had a proven reading/writing disorder. And even that only gets you excused only so far here. Ca. 50% here you get for your oral input and ideas in class, 50% for your written work. So if you write shitty but want a good grade, you have to be really excellent verbally. Which is a tough, but also good training for kids, I think. Having said that: Spelling on German internet sites is just as bad %-)
I grew up in horse-centric West Texas so there was never any doubt about the meaning of free rein.
Well, in the past, kings did ride on horseback…
Check out the video clip I mention in the addendum to this post.
I have to say, the changes that they talk about in that video drive me up the wall. Maybe I’m just a stickler – but I don’t want to think that just because I, say, and a whole bunch of my friends, don’t know the correct spelling of a phrase, suddenly our bastardization of it becomes acceptable. If I was an editor or a copy-editor and saw “free reign” in a manuscript, I don’t care if the OEDers have decided to make it okay, I’m going to fix it back to free rein. If I don’t, I run the risk of everyone who knows the original way thinking that I’m a doofus. If I do, those that weren’t aware that it didn’t take a g will now learn that it doesn’t.
Plus ‘free reign’ just doesn’t make sense to me. Monarchs have always had the freedom to rule as they see fit; it’s the definition of monarchy. Whereas usually a rein is used to restrict freedom. Without the tension between the two words, the usefulness and meaning of the phrase is lost.
I agree with Cat. “Free reign” is redundant
I pefer free rain.
Cat,
As long as we ‘re being sticklers about spelling, usage, syntax, and the like, perhaps you would like to change “If I was an editor…” to “If I were an editor…”. Sorry for the pedantry, but my high school English teacher and Strunk & White had a lasting influence on me.
(By the way, in case you’re interested, the usage of the comma between the second and third terms of the series above is perfectly acceptable, and is the preferred punctuation of strict traditionalists.)
No, no! If you Google “free rein” and “free reign” in quotes, meaning that the phrase appears not just the individual words, then the original, correct meaning gets more hits. When I see free reign in writing, I just see wrong.
I think David Duberman’s tone is really obnoxious: “you are doing x, aren’t you? You do know y, don’t you?” Yikes.