1880. Jas. Greenwood, Odd People in Odd Places, p. 64. A roaring trade is done, for instance, on a Saturday evening at the ‘Medley’ in Hoxton, a combination of theatre and music-hall, and serves as a free-and-easy chiefly for boys and girls. 1891. Cassell’s Saturday Journal, Sept., p. 1068, col. 3. The free-and-easy of to-day among us is a species of public-house party, at which much indifferent liquor and tobacco are consumed, songs are sung, and speeches are got rid of. Freebooker, subs. (journalists’).—A ‘pirate’ bookseller or publisher; a play on the word freebooter. Free fight, subs. (colloquial).—A general mellay. 1877. W. Mark, Green Past. and Picc., ch. xxx. That vehement German has been insisting on the Irish porters bringing up all our luggage at once; and as there has been a sort of free fight below he comes fuming upstairs. Free-fishery, subs. phr. (venery).—The female pudendum. For synonyms, see Monosyllable. Freeholder, subs. (venery).—1. A prostitute’s lover or fancyman. Cf., Free-fishery, and for synonyms, see Joseph. 2. (old).—A man whose wife insists on accompanying him to a public house. 1690. B. E., Dict. of the Canting Crew, s.v. 1785. Grose, Dict. of the Vulg. Tongue, s.v. Free-lance, subs. (common).—An habitual adulteress. c. 1889. (Quoted from Spectator in ‘Slang, Jargon, and Cant’). Sooner than be out of the fashion they will tolerate what should be most galling and shaming to them—the thought that by these they are put down among the free-lances. Also said of a journalist attached to no particular paper. Freeman, subs. (venery).—A married woman’s lover. Freeman of bucks, subs. phr. (old).—A cuckold. [In allusion to the horn.] Grose. To freeman, or to make a freeman of, verb. phr. (schoolboys’).—To spit on the penis of a new comer. Also To Freemason. Freeman’s Quay. To drink, or lush, at freeman’s quay, verb. phr. (old).—To drink at another’s expense. [Freeman’s Quay was a celebrated wharf near London Bridge, and the saying arose from the beer that was given to porters, carmen, and others going there on business.] 1811. Lexicon Balatronicum, s.v. Freeze, subs. (colloquial).—1. The act or state of freezing; a frost. 2. (old).—Hard cider.—Grose. Verb. (American).—1. To long for intensely; e.g., ‘to freeze to go back,’ said of the home-sick; ‘to freeze for meat.’ 1848. Ruxton, Life in the Far West (1887), p. 129. Threats of vengeance on every Redskin they met were loud and deep; and the wild war songs round their nightly camp-fires, and grotesque scalp-dances, borrowed from the Indians, proved to the initiated that they were, one and all, half-froze for hair. 2. (thieves’).—Hence, to appropriate; to steal; ‘to stick to.’ 3. (old).—To adulterate or balderdash (q.v.) wine with freeze (q.v. sense 2).—Grose.