Adjectival -Less and -Free: A Case of Shifting Institutional Currency

Abstract

FOR SEVERAL YEARS NOW I HAVE NOTICED an increasing use of both -free and -less in advertising copy and in product packaging. While these two elements seem to be treated as near synonyms by publicists and are often used to connote an equally desirable state, as in sugarfree and/or sugarless, the use of forms involving -free as a means of creating nonce adjectives from nouns seems to be increasing because of nuances of meaning which serve to separate it from -less, an originally parallel form. My interest in the differing nuances of meaning possessed by these endings became heightened when, in the course of watching a late-night television broadcast of Mrs. Miniver (made during 1941 in the United States and released in 1942; dir., William Wyler; script, Arthur Wimperis, James Hilton, et al.), I noticed that the scrolled introduction begins with the following reference to life in Britain at the outbreak of World War II: This story of an average English middle-class family begins with the summer of 1939; when the sun shone down on a happy, people.... To a speaker of American English, particularly one born during or after that war, this reference to the British people as seems particularly strange in light of a movie so highly favorable to the British and to the war effort that those careless people would undertake. American usage today would require to indicate what was clearly meant in the Mrs. Miniver introduction. The intended meaning for 'free from care' has a long history in English, as can be seen, for example, by Congreve's use of Careless as the name for Mellefont's untroubled, carefree friend in TheDouble Dealer (1696). However, the intended meaning is definitely not the connotatively current meaning, since the disparity between use and intent is glaring. While it would be possible and even tempting to assume that the difference in intended versus conveyed meaning results more from the two senses of the noun head care 'anguish; trouble' and 'caution; prudence,' this is clearly not the case, since the denotations of both carefree and are nearly identical-and in most dictionaries listed in essentially identical order. For example, carefree is listed as adj: free from care: as: a: having no worries ... b: irresponsible; incautious and as adj: 1. a: free from care, anxiety or responsibility; b: having no concern or interest 2. not taking