Meaning & use
fancy-free
Last updated
Meaning
adjectivecomparable
Free of commitments, responsibilities or romantic ties, so able to do what you like.
Grammar: Used after be or a linking verb, or before a noun: a fancy-free life.
Patterns
- footloose and fancy-free
- be fancy-free
After the exams, she felt footloose and fancy-free.
He enjoyed a fancy-free summer traveling around Europe.
With the children grown, they were fancy-free again.
Common combinations
- footloose and fancy-free
- They were footloose and fancy-free for the summer.
- fancy-free lifestyle
- He loved his fancy-free lifestyle.
- feel fancy-free
- I feel fancy-free on holiday.
- stay fancy-free
- She chose to stay fancy-free.
Synonyms and how they differ
- carefree
- Carefree describes someone without worries, whereas fancy-free stresses being without commitments.
- unattached
- Unattached is plainer and mostly about relationships.
- footloose
- Footloose says someone is free to move about, and is usually paired with fancy-free.
- untied
- Untied is much less common and sounds literal.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: fancy-free or fancy free (fancy)?
fancy-free vs fancy free (fancy)
Fancy meaning elaborate or expensive is not the sense here; in this phrase fancy is an old word for romantic attachment.
Practice
Which person is best described as footloose and fancy-free?
Choose one answer.
Fancy-free means free from commitments. The other people all have responsibilities that limit them.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “fancy-free”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.