means the state of being free to act, think, or speak as one chooses, without undue restriction from authority or circumstance.

from From Latin libertas, the condition of being a liber — a free person, as opposed to a slave. It traveled into English through Old French liberte. That same liber root branches out into a small family of freedom-words: liberal, liberate, and even deliver (to set loose). The Romans personified Libertas as a goddess crowned with a soft cap, the pileus, which freed slaves wore — a visual echo you can still spot in the liberty caps of later revolutions.