free reign
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English
[edit]Noun
[edit]- (sometimes proscribed) Eggcorn of free rein.
Usage notes
[edit]Evidence from various corpora suggests that 25% (in 2008 per Google Books Ngram data[1]) to 46% (in 2007 per Oxford English Corpus data)[2] of uses of "free rein" or "free reign" in English texts are of "free reign", leading some references to consider it an acceptable variant spelling.
References
[edit]- ^ free rein,free reign,(free rein + free reign) at Google Ngram Viewer
- ^ Are We Giving Free Rei(g)n to New Spellings?, October 18th, 2007, Ben Zimmer, OUPblog
Further reading
[edit]- Free Rein or Free Reign?
- National Dictionary Day: Do you spell “free reign” with a G?, 10/16/2007, ABC News