Meaning & use
free rider
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Meanings
nouncountabledisapproving
A person who gets the benefit of something that a group pays for or works for, without contributing anything toward it.
Grammar: Has a plural: free riders. Often followed by on: a free rider on the team's effort.
Patterns
- a free rider on something
- be a free rider
Nobody likes a free rider who lets everyone else clean the shared kitchen.
Two members of our project group turned out to be free riders, and the rest of us finished the report.
The company tried to stop free riders from using the service without paying.
nouncountabletechnical
In economics, someone who uses a public good or shared resource without paying their fair share of its cost.
Grammar: Used as a technical term, often in the phrase free rider problem.
Patterns
- the free rider problem
Economists say public broadcasting suffers from the free rider problem, since people can watch without donating.
A free rider in a vaccination program is someone protected by others' immunity without being vaccinated themselves.
Because street lighting benefits everyone, each household has a reason to be a free rider.
Word forms
| plural | free riders |
|---|
Common combinations
- the free rider problem
- The free rider problem explains why voluntary donations rarely cover the full cost of a park.
- prevent free riders
- The app asks for a login to prevent free riders from sharing one account.
- a notorious free rider
- He was a notorious free rider who always arrived after the heavy lifting was done.
- free rider on the system
- She felt like a free rider on the system after skipping the group's weekly meetings.
- act as a free rider
- Employees who act as free riders can damage team morale.
Synonyms and how they differ
- freeloader
- Freeloader is more informal and more openly insulting, and usually suggests living off someone's hospitality rather than a shared effort.
- sponge
- Sponge is informal and suggests someone who keeps asking for money or food, whereas a free rider simply benefits from a collective effort.
- slacker
- A slacker avoids work but does not necessarily benefit from other people's work, which is the core idea of a free rider.
- parasite
- Parasite is much harsher and implies the person drains others deliberately and continuously.
Opposites
Word family
- free-ride verb
- to benefit from a shared effort without contributing
- free riding noun
- the behavior of a free rider
- freeloader noun
- someone who takes without giving anything back
Commonly confused: free rider or free ride?
free rider vs free ride
A free ride is a trip you do not pay for, or a benefit you get with no effort. A free rider is the person who gets it.
Practice
In the group assignment, Mark was a ____ who put his name on the report but never attended a single meeting.
Choose one answer.
A free rider benefits from the group's work without contributing. A bystander only watches and a whistleblower exposes wrongdoing, so neither fits Mark putting his name on others' work.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “free rider”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.