a. [f. FREE a. + HEART + -ED2.] Having a ‘free heart’ in various senses; frank, open, unreserved; unburdened with anxiety, guilt, or suspicion; acting on the spontaneous impulse of the heart; generous, liberal, bountiful.
1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., XV. lxxix. (1495), 520. Angry of speche and sharpe. Netheles free herted and fayr of speche.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 177/2. Fre hertyd in yeftys … liberalis.
1549. Coverdale, Erasm. Par., Ded. 1. They shewed them selues so willing, so glad, so cherefull, and so fre harted, to further the worke and settyng vp of the Tabernacle.
1571. Golding, Calvin on Ps. xviii. 2. Bound … with the bond of freeharted and willing love.
1607. Shaks., Timon, III. i 10. How does that Honourable, Compleat, Free-hearted Gentleman of Athens.
1684. Otway, Atheist, I. i. Come, come, come, no trifling; be free-hearted and friendly.
1788. Gay, Begg. Op., II. i. Money was made for the Freehearted and Generous.
1820. W. Irving, Sketch Bk. (1859), 43. He [the Englishman] breaks loose gladly from the cold formalities and negative civilities of town; throws off his habits of shy reserve, and becomes joyous and free-hearted.
a. 1853. Robertson, Lect., ii. (1858), 61. Regulated the simplicities of human life by a rigorous proscription of all free-hearted mirth.
1887. San Francisco Exam., 30 Jan., 10/2. No one George Hearst ever know, who required financial assistance, but what he gave it in his natural bluff, frank and free-hearted manner.
Hence Free-heartedly adv. (in mod. Dicts.); Free-heartedness.
1607. Hieron, Wks., I. 389. As for examples, we haue … the free heartednesse of Cornelius: He gaue much almes.
1686. Burnet, Trav., i. (1750), 57. They all met with a kindness and free heartedness, that lookt more like somewhat of the primitive age revived, then the degeneracy of the age in which we live.
