freemason

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A member of the Free and Accepted Masons, an international fraternal and charitable organization with secret rites and signs.
2. n. A member of a guild of skilled itinerant masons during the Middle Ages.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A member of an order, fraternity, or brotherhood forming a secret society, or series of affiliated secret societies called lodges, now existing in all the countries of Europe, in many parts of America, and in other parts of the world where Europeans have settled in larger or smaller communities. This society is founded on and professes the practice of social and moral virtue; truth, charity in its most extended sense, brotherly love, and mutual assistance being inculcated in it. It possesses an elaborate ritual, numerous grades of officers, and many secret signs and passwords, by which members may make themselves known to other members of the craft in any part of the world. Secret organizations of free or enfranchised operative masons, with similar rituals, were formed in the middle ages, when skilled workmen moved from place to place to assist in building the magnificent sacred structures—cathedrals, abbeys, etc.—which had their origin in those times, and it was essential for them to have some signs by which, on coming to a strange place, they could be recognized as real craftsmen and not impostors. There was such a society of actual masons and builders in England in the seventeenth century, and some persons not belonging to the craft had been accepted as members of it; hence the full name of the present fraternity, “Free and Accepted Masons” (abbreviated F. and A. M.). Modern freemasonry dates from the organization in 1717 of the four lodges then existing in London, on a new basis, into a grand lodge, by which other grand lodges were chartered. To mark its departure from the limited scope of the original society, the principles and methods of the order are called speculative masonry, the terms and insignia of operative masonry being retained. Fable, though absolutely without any historical basis, takes the history of the order back to the Roman empire, to the Pharaohs, to the building of Solomon's temple or the tower of Babel, or even to the building of Noah's ark.

Wiktionary

1. n. A member of a guild of skilled itinerant masons during the Middle Ages.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. One of an ancient and secret association or fraternity, said to have been at first composed of masons or builders in stone, but now consisting of persons who are united for social enjoyment and mutual assistance.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a member of a widespread secret fraternal order pledged to mutual assistance and brotherly love