free reign
English
Etymology
Eggcorn misconstruction of free rein (literally “relaxed reins (on a horse)”), confounding rein (“straps used in steering”) with reign (“rule”).
Noun
free reign
- (nonstandard, sometimes proscribed) Alternative form of free rein
Usage notes
Evidence from various corpora suggests that 25% (in 2008 per Google Books Ngram data[1]) to 46% (in 2007 per Oxford English Corpus data)[2] of uses of "free rein" or "free reign" in English texts are of "free reign", leading some references to consider it an acceptable variant spelling.
References
- free rein,free reign,(free rein + free reign) at Google Ngram Viewer
- Are We Giving Free Rei(g)n to New Spelling, October 18th, 2007, Ben Zimmer, OUPblog
Further reading
- Free Rein or Free Reign?
- National Dictionary Day: Do you spell “free reign” with a G?, 10/16/2007, ABC News
Anagrams
- green fire