Douglas Royds wrote:
BTW, which 3rd meaning of "free" did you mean? Free to move? Free of rants? Uninhibited? Available for the next punter?
It was an allusion to the "Buy 1 and get another one FREE!" type of statement.
This meaning of free is not free-as-in-freedom, and not really free-as-in-cost (You have to buy another one after all). It is almost always seen in all-caps and with an exclamation mark. A Pet Peeve of mine :-)
After posting, I mused on a 4th definition of free: free-as-in-without, usually used as a suffix. Hence we have "fat free" and "content free", which have markedly different meanings than "free content" and "free fat".
Although, to be fair, the 4th definition should really be the third, and the third should be considered a munted version of free-as-in-cost, forced on us by people with marketing degrees.
Ahh, the bizarre-ity of the English language :-)
Cheers, Carl.
