Free Rein or Free Reign?

37 Responses to “Free Rein or Free Reign?”

1. dirtywhitecandy on June 11, 2009 12:07 pm

   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.

2. JamesD on June 11, 2009 12:42 pm

   Thanks for the useful info. It’s so interesting

3. Nuscha on June 11, 2009 1:39 pm

   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 %-)

4. Deborah H on June 11, 2009 1:43 pm

   I grew up in horse-centric West Texas so there was never any doubt about the meaning of free rein.

5. CC on June 13, 2009 8:16 am

   Well, in the past, kings did ride on horseback…

6. Maeve on June 13, 2009 1:28 pm

   Check out the video clip I mention in the addendum to this post.

7. Cat on June 14, 2009 5:24 pm

   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.

8. Dog on June 21, 2009 5:48 am

   I agree with Cat. “Free reign” is redundant

9. John on June 23, 2009 2:46 pm

   I pefer free rain.

10. BobM on September 24, 2009 4:10 am

    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.)

11. Kathryn on October 7, 2009 8:33 pm

    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.

12. Reader on November 3, 2009 9:33 pm

    I think David Duberman’s tone is really obnoxious: “you are doing x, aren’t you? You do know y, don’t you?” Yikes.

13. Simon P on January 19, 2010 9:18 am

    I guess the real problem here is that if you don’t know whether the correct answer is ‘rein’ or ‘reign’, then you might plump for ‘reign’ as it kind of makes sense in the context of the meaning of the phrase, i.e. to be able to do what you want.

    It’s reining men, Hallelujah!

14. A. M. Harte on January 20, 2010 11:59 am

    I just wrote “free rein” in a story, and then had an inkling of doubt between rein/reign and ended up googling it.

    I generally stick to using rein, but I could see how it would be interesting/funny to use reign in certain cases, e.g. “The boy was given free reign of the Kingdom of Grammar.”

    David’s letter and your reply made me google “free rein” and “free reign” as well – only to get different results for the third time!! I got:

    Results 1 – 10 of about 1,160,000 for “free rein”
    Results 1 – 10 of about 485,000 for “free reign”

    (does Safesearch being on make a difference?)

    Then again, I’m using the English Google, and everyone knows that if you don’t give it tea promptly at half eleven it doesn’t work properly.

15. Alice on January 25, 2010 7:44 pm

    Thank you for this post – my first instinct was “rein,” so I guess I was right. Interesting how language changes with time…

    Also, you’re all using the same Google, but Google’s search bots don’t always search the same pages of the Internet each time someone searches, even with the same terms. It depends how many other people are searching, which of their several servers is getting the least traffic, which pages it’s searched before or has to search anew, how many new pages are going up over time, and a number of other factors.

    My results:
    “free rein” : 860,000
    “free reign” : 542,000
    And I’m using the Canadian version.

    Google is not comprehensive and does not search the whole web, or even most of the web. It just utilizes the most comprehensive search allegory we have right now.

16. JB on March 15, 2010 9:01 pm

    This article is an excellent example of the tyrrany of the majority. The simple fact that a majority of people hold a collective opinion does not make said opinion factual.

17. Walter Kamphoefner on April 4, 2010 8:55 pm

    It’s worse than you realize:
    “On health care, some like Mr. Galston argued that Mr. Obama took the Clinton lesson too far by giving Congress too much free reign.”
    “Is President Obama Fulfilling Clinton’s Promise?” By PETER BAKER
    New York Times: April 2, 2010.

18. Cletus on April 14, 2010 6:37 pm

    Y’all a buncha dufuses’; who kars’~

19. zymerati on April 26, 2010 12:02 am

    Alice dear — search allegory??? it’s “search algorythm,” you silly language nerd!! but it did give me a great laugh, so you’re forgiven, LOL!!

    now, Alice’s mistake above is funny, but not troubling. The truly scary part of this page is the collective lack of a sense of the subjunctive tense! It’s not “if I *was* king….” it’s “if I **WERE** king…. fingernails on the chalkboard material!!!

    anyway, if I were king, I’d give the peasants neither free rein nor free reign, LOL!!

20. Pragmat on May 26, 2010 9:00 pm

    What does it really matter? Sayings and idioms are inevitably subject to change in all societies, and become warped and “corrupt” from a traditional point of view, but they wouldn’t exist if they didn’t serve a purpose.
    “Free reign” is a deviation, obviously, but its meaning is essentially the same. Pedantry is cool and all, but it very rarely matters in real life. It’s nothing to get hung up out about.
    Most people don’t know the disturbing origin of the phrase “rule of thumb”, but so what? Does that alter its meaning when its said?
    No, no its doesn’t.
    There’s nothing wrong with being proud of your studious mastery of literary and etymological esoterica, but its nothing to be… arrogant about. You know who you are deep down.
    It’s good to know but it doesn’t matter. There are much more important things in life than nit-picking irrelevant crap.

    That said, I will continue to say free reign.

21. tigtog on August 19, 2010 9:54 pm

    Pragmat, since you left your comment in May you’re probably long gone, but for the record, if you think that the phrase “the rule of thumb” has a disturbing origin then you have fallen for an urban etymology legend.

    The Straight Dope has the real story, which is that it is what most people always thought it was, a phrase from carpentry about rough measuring.

22. PedantQueen on October 17, 2010 10:35 pm

    zymerati : the subjunctive is not a tense, really, I was taught it is a mood. (Yeah, I get really moody if I see “free reign” too .. just alowing my inner pedant a little playtime.) To remind myself, I’ve just looked it up .. Wikipedia says “Currently identified moods include conditional, imperative, indicative, injunctive, optative, potential, subjunctive, and more.” Of course English doesn’t really have all these, or should I say it doesn’t classify utterances that way? Unless someone uses a form that seems odd to the uneducated ear, most people wouldn’t notice the subjunctive or donditional unless it bit them, e.g. “Unless he were to use ..” would hit hard on an uneducated ear, because it looks and sounds just as if the speaker had used the plural form with a singular subject.

23. PedantQueen on October 17, 2010 10:36 pm

    Apologies for typos.

24. Jose Rizal on October 25, 2010 11:42 am

    I don’t think anyone has addressed the “free range” aspect of this where chicken have control of their own destiny.

    Is it free range, free reign or free rein?

25. Maeve on October 27, 2010 10:07 am

    @Jose
    The expression “free range” refers to the fact that the chicken is free to roam over an open area.

    The area in which an animal lives and finds food is called its “range.” For example, a male raccoon has a range of up to 20 square miles.

26. Julia Dawson on November 23, 2010 1:38 pm

    Does the female raccoon have to stay at home?

27. Judy on January 7, 2011 12:12 pm

    Actually, it’s “algorithm”

28. Guinnevere on March 1, 2011 3:20 pm

    I hate to admit it, but I’ve also reached the conclusion that it’s too late to correct the problem. Editors of books and magazines and newspapers, as well as teachers, have reached a level of illiteracy that is nearly as low as that of the people they are supposed to be guiding.

    Some of it, I suppose, can be blamed on electronic spell-checking programs that can’t tell the difference between homonyms as long as there… their… THEY’RE not misspelled in themselves (“thur?” … “thar?”). Typographical errors do happen, and often they spell a real word that merely does not fit the context.

    Some of it, on the other hand, consists of teachers and editors who declare “I could care less!” when they mean the opposite: that they don’t care at all and therefore could NOT care less. Or that one has “a hard road to hoe,” instead of hoeing a ROW of a garden, or (my personal nightmare) that they want to “Hone in” on an objective. Indeed, I have been “corrected” by people who ought to know better, when I use the correct phrase, “HOME in.” (As a homing pigeon would do; I’ve never heard of a “honing” pigeon.)

    The mangled phrases are now in such general use that they’re included in dictionaries and thesauri as acceptable.

    I’ve used phrases without knowing the correct etymology of the words. “A flash in the pan” is one of them, but while I knew it applied to a fruitless endeavor that had showed early promise, I did not know that it originated from old firearms that could ignite the powder in the pan but not fire the main charge. I imagined a different source, having to do with panning for gold, until the true source was explained to me.

    I think that’s the main part of the problem: with no one to teach the correct spelling or source of a saying, people make up their own explanations and usually they’re wrong. Then the imaginary definition falls into such common use that in time no one remembers the real or original meaning.

29. chris on April 22, 2011 2:44 am

    @Guinnevere – “…Some of it, on the other hand, consists of teachers and editors who declare “I could care less!” when they mean the opposite: that they don’t care at all and therefore could NOT care less…”

    Amen! That phrase used in the opposite drives me nuts!

30. Jeff on August 9, 2011 3:43 pm

    I’m sorry, but no, Pragmat. It doesn’t mean essentially the same. In fact the “essence”, or what it means “at root”, is entirely different. Only superficially do the meanings overlap. And that is the problem.

    The richness and significance of language actually comes from deep down. That is what is important.

    The rein is something that normally is restraining. And “free rein” does not even mean what the ABC clip shows. It’s not dropping the reins. It’s intentionally leaving the reins slack while still holding them. As such, it has a deep meaning of a granted release from the usual permanent control, while the former controller still rides along, and could take up the reins again at any time.

    “Free reign” is just an ugly redundant construction. What would an unfree reign be?

    Similar issues with the other terms in the video. “Vocal chord” is an oxymoron because a person can only vocalize one note at a time. “Shoe-in” is just a confused version of “foot in the door” and has none of the connotations of “ease” that the correct version does.

    This is not nit-picking at all. It’s pointing out the extreme loss of richness that results from careless and erroneous usage. And the ignorant disrespect of language that type of usage represents.

    Since I’m watching “Bridge over the River Kwai” again, here’s an analogy: you’re Saito and the so-called “nit-pickers” are Nicholson.

31. Kate on August 13, 2011 2:10 am

    Language is not concrete, so stop thinking of it as such.

    Words gain new meanings all the time.

    As anyone versed at all in communication knows, meanings are in people, not in words.

32. Brian on August 15, 2011 4:33 pm

    @Kate

    You’re right that words are made for people and not people for words, but I still think the above degeneration of “free rein” to “free reign” is tragic. I say that because “free reign” is just a weak idiom.

    “Free rein” possesses real, rich symbolic power as an idiom, whereas “free reign” means…what? It is hard to derive a cogent analogy for “free reign”, even for pragmatists. It is a deadening of our language when it loses layers of meaning. At least, so long as it loses those layers without replacing them with new connections and nuances of expression. I don’t see any new layers or connections from free reign. Just negligent writing.

33. ridley on October 28, 2011 11:36 pm

    I love the original “free rein” spelling of the phrase. Partly because of having read the horsey book “Hold The Rein Free” as an impressionable child. But also because, if you know horses at all, “free rein” has a very powerful imagery behind it that “free reign” utterly lacks. As a onetime rider I have vivid memories of giving horses free rein, usually in one in 3 situations. (1) You’ve just finished your lessons/workout/show/whatever, you give your horse free rein as you’re coming out of the ring, and your horse instantly knows that its workout is over. It streeeetches its neck down, and slows into a meandering saunter….it gives a big happy sigh… happy horse! (2) You’re riding a fresh horse who really wants to run. You reach the racetrack/beach/whatever, you give your horse free rein and BOOM! Off like a shot of lightning! (This is one of the single most exciting sensations in the world.) (3) You know your horse so well and trust it so much, and your horse knows and trusts you so well, that you give it free rein right in the middle of whatever you’re doing (trailriding/whatever), simply handing over command to the horse. 9 times out of 10 the horse doesn’t let you down but carries on about its task with sensible good judgment and a better work ethic than most people would show. t’s a really sweet moment to reach that level of mutual trust with a new horse.

    In any of those three situations there is a powerful sense that you are very deliberately handing over control to the horse. And the horses most definitely know it.

    “Free reign” seems unbearably bland in comparison.

34. Linda on October 29, 2011 5:52 am

    My personal bete noir (sorry, I can’t find the circumflex — or circonflex as the French would have it — to put over the “e”) is “flush it out” when people mean “flesh it out.” It bothers me so much I will stop a meeting and correct the flusher. They probably are thinking of flushing out a covey of quail and not flushing the toilet, ick. But it’s still wrong. And yes, fleshing out a skeletal concept is kind of icky too, but…

    Oh here’s another one: “step foot” as in “He won’t step foot in her house again.” Arghhhh! These people have conflated step with set foot — and there you are: a monstrosity. What else would one “step” with? Step hand? Step face? Step gluteus maximus? You can’t even “step” a foot. You step. You set foot.

    Whew, glad I got that off my ….

    I just read “free reign” in a book I had been enjoying. After that phrase bit me, I had to google it, and that’s how I got here. Step foot indeed. Free reign indeed.

35. Steve on November 29, 2011 10:22 pm

    Does “free reign” or “free rein” matter?

    You bet it does!

    I recently wrote content in an advertising campaign, telling people to pressure their government to “reign in” something. What I really meant was for them to “rein in …” and so I completely distorted the intended meaning.

    Own goal. Shot in foot.

36. Stephen Sanders on January 10, 2012 3:32 pm

    I am so glad I found this. It seems that in matters of certain areas including basics of usage and grammar, it often simply no longer matters what is correct or not.

    In the ever shifting world of I simply have termed “Social Tropism” the thing (for better or worse) what matters most is not simply what is correct, but rather what “most people” think is correct.

    Utilizing a word’s multiple connotations as an aspect of what makes the writing process so expansive and rich. I suppose that Google plays a huge role in this Paradigm-Shift info by making all these “new statistics” available with a few simple keystrokes.

    Conclusion: “What do you want, good grammar or strong SEO?”- Stephen C. Sanders, Jan 10, 2012, 1:32pm EST

    Stephen C. Sanders

37. David de la Fuente on January 11, 2012 10:22 am

    As far as people getting different Google results, if your browser recognizes you as a registered Google user, you’re getting different results than anyone else in the world. Google’s analytics and algorithms are tailored to individual users, as I learned in Eli Pariser’s book “The Filter Bubble,” and that’s why everyone’s numbers are different above. (The book laments this trend, saying that serendipity and exposure to new ideas is lost when Google and other sites like news and entertainment learn to give you exactly what you’re looking for first, but that trend, like “free reign,” is here to stay as well.)

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