Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Not governed by a foreign power; self-governing.
- adj. Free from the influence, guidance, or control of another or others; self-reliant: an independent mind.
- adj. Not determined or influenced by someone or something else; not contingent: a decision independent of the outcome of the study.
- adj. Affiliated with or loyal to no one political party or organization.
- adj. Not dependent on or affiliated with a larger or controlling entity: an independent food store; an independent film.
- adj. Not relying on others for support, care, or funds; self-supporting.
- adj. Providing or being sufficient income to enable one to live without working: a person of independent means.
- adj. Mathematics Not dependent on other variables.
- adj. Mathematics Of or relating to a system of equations no one of which can be derived from another equation in the system.
- adj. Of or relating to the 17th-century English Independents.
- n. One that is independent, especially a voter, officeholder, or political candidate who is not committed to a political party.
- n. A member of a movement in England in the 17th century advocating the political and religious independence of individual congregations.
- n. Chiefly British A Congregationalist.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Not dependent; not requiring the support or not subject to the control or controlling influence of others; not relying on others for direction or guidance; not subordinate; of things, not standing in a relation of dependence to something else: used absolutely or followed by of, formerly sometimes by on: as, a person's fortunes in life are quite independent of the configuration of the planets at his nativity.
- Not due to or connected with dependence; pertaining to or permitting freedom of action; free of control or restraint: as, an independent income, estate, or position; independent action.
- Not subject to bias or influence; self-directing.
- Proceeding from or expressive of a spirit of independence; free; easy; self-confident; bold; unconstrained: as, an independent air or manner.
- Irrespective; exclusive; without taking note or notice: followed by of.
- [capitalized] Of or pertaining to the Independents or Congregationalists; belonging to the Independents.
- In mathematics, not depending upon another for its value: said of a quantity or function.
- Having a competency; able to live well without labor; well-to-do.
- n. One who acts with independence; one who acts in accordance with his own will, judgment, or conscience.
- n. [capitalized] Eccles., one who maintains the principles of independency, or the freedom of the local church from external control; specifically, in England, a name given to a Congregationalist. The Independents of England differ from the Congregationalists of the United States in laying less stress upon and making less provision for the fellowship of the local churches. The name Congregationalists is assumed by both the English and American bodies; the use of the name Independent as a denominational title is almost exclusively confined to Great Britain. The English Independents attained great political power at the time of the Long Parliament and the Commonwealth.
- n. [cap. or lowercase] In politics: One who acts independently of any organized party; one who opposes or supports measures or men on independent grounds.
- n. One of an organized party assuming the name “Independent”; specifically, in United States politics, a member of the party otherwise called the Greenback party.
Wiktionary
- adj. not dependent; not contingent or depending on something else; free.
- adj. politics not affiliated with any political party
- n. A candidate or voter not affiliated with any political party, a free thinker, free of a party platform.
- n. A neutral or uncommitted person.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Not dependent; free; not subject to control by others; not relying on others; not subordinate.
- adj. Affording a comfortable livelihood.
- adj. Not subject to bias or influence; not obsequious; self-directing.
- adj. Expressing or indicating the feeling of independence; free; easy; bold; unconstrained.
- adj. Separate from; exclusive; irrespective.
- adj. (Eccl.) Belonging or pertaining to, or holding to the doctrines or methods of, the Independents.
- adj. (Math.) Not dependent upon another quantity in respect to value or rate of variation; -- said of quantities or functions.
- adj. (U. S. Politics) Not bound by party; exercising a free choice in voting with either or any party.
- n. (Eccl.) One who believes that an organized Christian church is complete in itself, competent to self-government, and independent of all ecclesiastical authority.
- n. (Politics) One who does not acknowledge an obligation to support a party's candidate under all circumstances; one who exercises liberty in voting.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a neutral or uncommitted person (especially in politics)
- adj. (of a clause) capable of standing syntactically alone as a complete sentence
- adj. free from external control and constraint
- adj. (of political bodies) not controlled by outside forces
- n. a writer or artist who sells services to different employers without a long-term contract with any of them
- adj. not controlled by a party or interest group
Etymologies
- in- + dependent (Wiktionary)
Examples
“The term 'independent journalist' here usually refers to reporters for a news source other than those owned by the state or political parties, though this does not necessarily mean they are free of outside interests.”
“A Money & Investing article on Wednesday mistakenly used the word independent instead of initial.”
“Canada will remain independent from the United States to the extent it will be able to develop its inner resources in men, in ideas and in ideals.”
“The camera and medical device maker says outside lawyers and accountants will be part of what it called an independent review.”
The Wall Street Journal: Ousted Olympus CEO Dismisses Internal Review
“■ Remember that the word "independent" sounds sweet, but can taste pretty sour.”
The Guardian: It's worth remembering: press freedom is a messy business
“It's a title independent analyst John Avalon gives to someone on the far right and on the far left who he says is trying to divide us rather than unite us.”
“It's a title independent analyst John Avlon gives to someone on the far right and the far left who he says is trying to divide us rather than unite us.”
“The contract said that from the day we finished our album, Transcon had exactly one year to release our album in the United States or we would have the right to find ourselves a separate American label independent of Pearlman and Transcon.”
“The Miami Herald doing what they described as their independent analysis of all of the votes, and they concluded that if there was a fair count, Al Gore would carry Florida by 23,000 votes.”
“But I helped organize clinics in what we called independent, unorganized territory, and I helped and worked up these what we called institutes, school health institutes for teachers.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘independent’.
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Impressionism
Words that describe the art of the impressionist era.
seascapes, landscapes, modern, impression, impressionist, contemporary, flicker, sensation, modernity, perceived, perceiving, momentary and 142 more...
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Dominant/Submissive
abusive, adamant, autocratic, bossy, bullheaded, bumptious, certain, cock-a-hoop, cocksure, cocky, commanding, compelling and 189 more...
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TECH - web application frameworks
object-oriented p..., ALGOL, validation, Erlang, markup language, Python, hibernate, framework, Apache, template, mapper, Java and 310 more...
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EU Buzz - Lisbon Treaty
All words of the Lisbon Treaty
(Persons' names, foreign and grammatical words have been eliminated, MWEs have been split up into individual words. Capitalization has been retained if r...conferral, stateless, person, voting, right, subsidiarity, Latvia, Malta, Slovenia, Lithuania, Finland, Estonia and 2614 more...
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EU Buzz - single words (1+2+3)
1. Strictly EU terms with special European meaning used only in the EU
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2. Keywords central to the understanding of the EU (people working for the EU are usually able to give thematic...acceleration, action, additionality, administrator, agenda, agricultural, agri-environmental, agriflation, agri-food, applicant, approach, assent and 1325 more...
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POL - mathematics
Mathematical metaphors in political discourse
integrate, table, modular, member, modal, additive, product, unit, element, metric, sector, compute and 54 more...
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Positive womanhoods
Glossary of positive terms for often marginalised, or negatively termed, groups of women, e.g. childless, unmarried, post-menopausal
Childless:, childfree, child-carer, nurturer, alternative parent, aunt, mentar (not -or), matronne, Childless and par..., familyfree, anti-nuclear, familyextended and 17 more...
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The Medley of Me
A jumble of words, sometimes contradictory, that add up to me. I'll probably be adding to this list for some time, because I'm a very complex individual. ;P
male, long-haired, big-eyed, writer, artist, guitarist, songsmith, talespinner, pilot, wannabe barnstormer, gypsy, cuddlesome and 209 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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Masthead Staples
Words from newspaper names/titles. Not the place names or titles of specific publications, just the reusable bits.
times, courier, advocate, news, telegraph, mirror, mail, bulletin, the, post, tribune, chronical and 108 more...
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classic695's Words
delighted, elated, energetic, excited, enthusiastic, elevated, happy, contented, fine, pleased, satisfied, compassionate and 168 more...
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colleen's words ii
sibilant, sundry, spindle, distaff, device, mortar, pestle, scythe, flail, thresh, frown, elementary and 495 more...
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Beknownst1981's list
I love words, especially the ones I make up with my friends.
translucent meat ..., beknownst (knew), plethora, curmudgeon, wanderlust, actually, differentiate, bearded, hobbit feet, female, sexy time, librarian and 220 more...
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Basic English Vocabulary
Very basic words for ESL students.
a, abandon, ability, able, abortion, about, above, abroad, absence, absolute, absolutely, absorb and 4334 more...
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feeling words
twitterpated, loquacious, ambiguous, pensive, sluggish, anxious, adventurous, curious, abandoned, absent-minded, abrasive, abused and 653 more...
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my dictionary
able, abnormally, abroad, absent, abstract, acceptable, acceptance, access, accessible, accession, according to, account and 4551 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for independent.

chained_bear Ain't no shame in the game! Sep 10, 2008
Prolagus The great mother is a virgin, too, in a sense other than intended by the patriarchate, which later misunderstood her as the symbol of chastity. Precisely in virtue of her fruitfulness, she is a virgin, that is, unrelated and not dependent
upon any man. In Sanskrit, "independent woman" is a synonym for a harlot.
(The Origins and History of Consciousness, by Erich Neumann) Sep 10, 2008