March 24, 1997

libertine

In your article on in like Flynn you mentioned libertinism. The only other place I recall hearing this word was in the musical "The Music Man" where Prof. Harold Hill refers to "libertine" women. Obviously this is no compliment. Please enlighten me.

This sense of libertine is 'a person who is morally or sexually unrestrained; a dissolute man; profligate; rake'. A good early example from our favorite poet: Laertes gives his sister Ophelia a long speech about how she should spurn Hamlet's advances; Ophelia replies in kind, saying "Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,/Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,/Whiles, like a puffed and reckless libertine,/Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads" (Hamlet I.iii).

The earliest sense of libertine is the historical sense 'a person freed from slavery in ancient Rome'. For our purposes, the earliest relevant meaning is 'a freethinker in religious matters', that is, 'a person whose religious opinions differ from established belief'. This usually disparaging description is a late sixteenth century sense probably borrowed from the Middle French libertin. Our sense 'morally or sexually unrestrained person' is an outgrowth of this.

Libertine is rather common from the late sixteenth century onwards. It is usually at least mildly disparaging, since it describes someone whose behavior is considered unconventional in an immoral manner. Its application to women is rather rare (due, no doubt, to social rather than linguistic reasons), but does occur: "The sportiveness of innocence, so pleasing to refined libertines of both sexes, is widely different in its essence from this superior gracefulness" (Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman).

Libertine ultimately comes from a Latin adjective meaning 'of or pertaining to a freeman', and is related to our English word liberty.