free reign

== English == === Etymology === From free rein, from a confusion of reign with rein. === Noun === free reign (sometimes proscribed) Eggcorn of free rein. ==== Usage notes ==== Evidence from various corpora suggests that 25% (in 2008 per Google Books Ngram data) to 46% (in 2007 per Oxford English Corpus data) 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, or more precisely, an acceptable synonymous homophone via a different metaphor. === References === === Further reading === Maeve Maddox (2009), “Free Rein or Free Reign?”, in Daily Writing Tips‎[2], archived from the original on 23 April 2024. === Anagrams === green fire