Lost Liberty

What is the defining expression of the American way? In a word, it is liberty. From liberty's famed appearance in the United States Declaration of Independence through its role in emancipation, no other word has so embraced and shaped the country's distinct ethos. So what does it mean that the word inhabits less real estate in American dictionaries and American rhetoric?

Lost Liberty: Recovering Historical Definitions of America's Most Important Word charts the substantial usage of the word in America, drawing from primary sources such as dictionaries and books to examine how it emerged, and why it has steadily receded. From the pens of colonists fleeing religious persecution through the framers of the Constitution, no single string of letters garnered as much cultural currency or has spawned as many phrases incorporating it. "Natural liberty," "religious liberty," "civil liberty," and "liberty of the press" were mainstays, but we forged other phrases, too: "celestial liberty," "federal liberty," "wild liberty," and "savage liberty," among many others.

To paraphrase founding father Thomas Jefferson, new circumstances call for new words. The singular circumstance that forged this nation elevated the word liberty to such prominence in the country's collective consciousness that entries in American dictionaries exponentially surpassed British counterparts of the same era. So why did its usage decline so dramatically?