free reign

English

Etymology

From free rein, from a confusion of reign with rein.

Noun

free reign

  1. (sometimes proscribed) Eggcorn of free rein.

Usage notes

  • Evidence from various corpora suggests that 25% (in 2008 per Google Books Ngram data[1]) to 46% (in 2007 per Oxford English Corpus data)[2] of uses of free rein or free reign in English texts are of free reign, leading some references to consider it an acceptable variant spelling, or more precisely, an acceptable synonymous homophone via a different metaphor.

References

  1. ^ free rein,free reign,(free rein + free reign) at the Google Books Ngram Viewer.
  2. ^ Ben Zimmer (18 October 2007) “Are We Giving Free Rei(g)n to New Spellings?”, in OUP Blog‎[1], archived from the original on 11 November 2023.

Further reading

  • Maeve Maddox (2009) “Free Rein or Free Reign?”, in Daily Writing Tips‎[2], archived from the original on 23 April 2024.

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