Meaning
Free of romantic attachments and unburdened by emotional commitments. In its original Tudor sense it meant untouched by amorous thoughts altogether, since 'fancy' denoted romantic inclination; today it shades more generally into being carefree and unconstrained, especially in the fixed pairing 'footloose and fancy-free'. Informal and somewhat light-hearted in tone. Light, informal, faintly whimsical; today most often encountered inside the fixed pairing 'footloose and fancy-free'. Regional use: General English (Shakespearean origin).
Origin
Oberon's speech in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 2 Scene 1, describes Cupid's arrow failing against a fair vestal 'throned by the west', who passes on 'in maiden meditation, fancy-free' - a passage widely read as a compliment to Queen Elizabeth I. In Tudor English 'fancy' meant amorous inclination, so the phrase described someone free of romantic feeling. The Phrase Finder treats the play (dated 1598 on its page) as the phrase's first record, though the Online Etymology Dictionary dates the compound to the 1580s, leaving slight uncertainty over exact priority. It spread into general use partly through the nineteenth-century American pairing 'footloose and fancy-free', first recorded in the Daily Arkansas Gazette of January 1877, now the dominant form.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- footloose and fancy free
- footloose and fancy-free
Usage Examples
- At twenty-two he was fancy-free, with no mortgage, no partner, and a rucksack full of vague plans.
- She spent a fancy-free summer between degrees wandering the coast on a borrowed bicycle.
- Once the twins started school, those fancy-free weekends of ours disappeared for a decade.