free reign

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

Anagrams edit

green fire

[1] ree rein,free reign,(free rein + free reign) at Google Ngram Viewer

[2] Are We Giving Free Rei(g)n to New Spellings?, October 18th, 2007, Ben Zimmer, OUPblog

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