freewheel

1. 1.

   live unhurriedly, irresponsibly, or freely

   “My son drifted around for years in California before going to law school”

   Synonymsdrift

   Broaderexist
2. 2.

   coast in a vehicle using the freewheel

   Broadercoast

1. 1.

   a clutch (as on the rear wheel of a bicycle) that allows wheels to turn freely (as in coasting)

   Broaderclutch

Other forms of freewheel

plural

freewheels·

past tense

freewheeled·

present participle

freewheeling·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about freewheel

What does freewheel mean?

freewheel means "live unhurriedly, irresponsibly, or freely". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in freewheel?

freewheel has 2 syllables: free-wheel. The stress falls on "wheel".

What is another word for freewheel?

Close synonyms include drift. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is freewheel a common word?

freewheel is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.