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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
David Fear, Rolling Stone, 28 Jan. 2026
Yet even as Washington’s will was published hundreds of times in pamphlets and newspapers and the nation learned of its remarkable emancipation provisions, few Americans highlighted it in the way Allen had.
—John Garrison Marks, Time, 23 Jan. 2026
Venerable said the goal was not to frame Black cowboy history only through pain or exclusion, but through endurance and achievement, including families – like his own —who stayed connected to land and livestock long after emancipation.
—Kansas City Star, 31 Dec. 2025
This one being of post-war emancipation, when the convergent forces of wanting to achieve a sun tan and wanting to show some skin became newly acceptable among socially progressive young people.
—Daniel Rodgers, Vogue, 28 Dec. 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 31 Jan. 2026.
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emancipation
noun
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emancipation
noun
