0 past simple and past participle of free
1 to allow someone to leave a prison or place where they have been kept:
2 to move or make loose someone or something that is caught or held somewhere:
3 to remove the limits or controls on someone or something:
Her retirement from politics will free her (= provide her with enough time) to write her memoirs.
4 to make something available for someone to use:
The government pursued every official channel to free the hostages.
She never gave up the struggle to have her son freed from prison.
Most political prisoners were freed under the terms of the amnesty.
The campaigners appealed to the government to free the prisoners.
Moreover, reference counts permit the following trick to avoid locking when a node is freed.
Lovers were drunk with emotion, crowds acted in a drunken frenzy, and drink freed the tongue to talk.
If the sustainable catch is fixed, improved technical efficiency is a benefit only if resources are freed from the catching sector for productive use elsewhere.