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To emancipate someone (including oneself) is to free them from restraint, control, or the power of another, and especially to free them from bondage or enslavement. It follows that the noun emancipation refers to the act or practice of emancipating. The Emancipation Proclamation issued by Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, for example, ordered that enslaved people living in the Confederate states be released from the bonds of ownership and made free people. It took more than two years for news of the proclamation to reach the enslaved communities in the distant state of Texas. The arrival of the news on June 19 (of 1865) is now celebrated as a national holiday—Juneteenth or Emancipation Day.
Examples of emancipation in a Sentence
Saleen Martin, USA Today, 19 June 2025
Unless the North pursued emancipation, Cobden said his countrymen would support the South.
—Zaakir Tameez
june 11, Literary Hub, 11 June 2025
Jane and Bob officially divorced in 2004; around that same time, Aaron accused his mother, who was also his manager at the time, of stealing $100,000 from him, and considered filing for legal emancipation.
—Kelsie Gibson, People.com, 15 Apr. 2025
But as the nineteenth century plodded onward, abolitionists had developed increasingly persuasive arguments for emancipation, provoking slaveowners to answer with a vicious theory of Black inferiority to defend bondage.
—Literary Hub, 5 June 2025
See All Example Sentences for emancipation
Cite this Entry
“Emancipation.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/emancipation. Accessed 27 Jun. 2025.
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emancipation
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emancipation
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