freelancer

noun

free·​lanc·​er ˈfrē-ˌlan(t)-sər 

plural freelancers

1

: a person who pursues a profession without a long-term commitment to any one employer : freelance sense 1

hired a freelancer to write the article

… there were hundreds of photographers on the scene, some on assignment, some freelancers, most of them amateurs.

—Garrison Keillor

But while Renzo is the ultimate company man, a lifetime employee who reports to the same office every morning, Riccardo is the prototypical freelancer, a peripatetic problem-solver with five-dozen clients.

—Bruce Schoenfeld

2

: a person who acts independently without being affiliated with or authorized by an organization : freelance sense 2b

[Anthony] Grafton contrasts public intellectuals outside and inside the universities, and he takes note of today's nostalgia for the freethinkers who lived and wrote independently of deans and classrooms. But it is good to be reminded that in that golden era of freelancers such as Wilson, H. L. Mencken, and Mary McCarthy, voices like theirs were also raised in universities.

—G. W. Bowersock

Examples of freelancer in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

And there are tens of thousands more people in Southern California who work for Hollywood as freelancers and contractors but aren’t counted in government payroll data. —Don Lee, Los Angeles Times, 10 June 2024

Access to these up-to-date, AI-competent freelancers provides businesses with a flexible and efficient means to accelerate their own adoption of new technologies. —Bykelly Monahan, Fortune, 6 June 2024

According to the survey, freelancers experienced more attacks than others with full-time media jobs. —Justine Calma, The Verge, 3 May 2024

While freelancers enjoy the freedom of the gig economy—freedom ain’t free. —Ebony Flake, Essence, 29 May 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1924, in the meaning defined at sense 1