Easton's Bible Dictionary
Found only
Acts 6:9, one who once had been a slave, but who had been set at liberty, or the child of such a person. In this case the name probably denotes those descendants of Jews who had been carried captives to Rome as prisoners of war by Pompey and other Roman generals in the Syrian wars, and had afterwards been liberated. In A.D. 19 these manumitted Jews were banished from Rome. Many of them found their way to Jerusalem, and there established a synagogue.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
1. (
n.) A free thinker who lacks moral restraint.
2. (n.) One of a sect of Anabaptists, in the fifteenth and early part of the sixteenth century, who rejected many of the customs and decencies of life, and advocated a community of goods and of women.
3. (n.) One free from restraint; one who acts according to his impulses and desires; now, specifically, one who gives rein to lust; a rake; a debauchee.
4. (n.) A defamatory name for a freethinker.
5. (n.) Free from restraint; uncontrolled.
6. (n.) Dissolute; licentious; profligate; loose in morals; as, libertine principles or manners.
