footloose

To be free of responsibilities, including romantic commitments (a fact that is often highlighted when this phrase is used). I love being a single woman, so I intend to be footloose and fancy-free for a long time. Now that I have a family and a mortgage, I miss being footloose and fancy-free.

Free of responsibilities, including romantic commitments (a fact that is often highlighted when this phrase is used). I love being a single woman, so I intend to be footloose and fancy-free for a long time. Now that I have a family and a mortgage, I miss being footloose and fancy-free.

Fig. without long-term responsibilities or commitments. All the rest of them have wives, but John is footloose and fancy-free. Mary never stays long in any job. She likes being footloose and fancy-free.

Having no attachments, especially romantic ones, and free to do as one pleases. For example, When I was in my twenties, footloose and fancy-free, I would travel at the drop of a hat . Both of these words have long been used separately; their pairing dates only from the 1900s.

If someone is footloose and fancy-free, they are not married or in a long-term relationship, or they have very few responsibilities. He was footloose and fancy-free. He could go to parties and pubs on his own, and come and go as he pleased. Note: This term refers to a sail that could move about freely because the ropes holding it at the foot or bottom were loose.

Unattached, especially in the sense of romantic involvement. The word footloose, meaning free to go anywhere, originated in the late seventeenth century. Fancy-free, meaning not in love (fancy once meant “in love”), dates from the sixteenth century. It was used by Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2.2), where Oberon tells Puck, “But I might see young Cupid’s fiery shaft quench’d in the chaste beams of the watery moon, and the imperial votaress passed on, in maiden-meditation, fancy-free.”

Unattached, especially romantically, and able to move and act without responsibilities. The “foot” is the bottom of a sail, and a sail that is footloose is free to move whichever way the wind blows. So is a person who is “footloose and fancy free,” at liberty to follow any and all whims. (Such a state sounds enviable, but keep in mind the fable about “The Grasshopper and the Ant.”)