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 the movement is becoming what employees expect, blending full-time personnel with contractors, freelancers and gig jobs. —Bryan Robinson, Forbes.com, 3 Sep. 2025

Immediately the familiar freelancer fear rose up. —Adam Verner september 3, Literary Hub, 3 Sep. 2025

Resistant to seeking full-time employment that would exhaust his writing time, Paul instead signs up to a website that assigns one-off menial jobs — yard work, rubble removal, flatpack furniture assembly — to the freelancer willing to work for the lowest possible rate. —Guy Lodge, Variety, 29 Aug. 2025

Al Jazeera confirmed that one of its journalists, Mohammed Salama, was also among the dead, while Reuters reported that Moaz Abu Taha, a freelancer who worked occasionally for the organization, died in the Israeli bombing along with al-Masri. —Molly Hunter, NBC news, 27 Aug. 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1924, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for freelancer

• enhancer
• merganser
• romancer
• anser
• answer
• cancer
• dancer
• lancer
• anticancer
• necromancer