liberal

1. (now rare outside set phrases) Pertaining to those arts and sciences the study of which is considered to provide general knowledge, as opposed to vocational/occupational, technical or mechanical training.Examples: "He had a full education studying the liberal arts."; "Americans remain enamored with Europe's ability to produce the consequential thought for America. It was the same in nearly every liberal field. Education sought its roots in such Europeans as Froebel, Frobenius, and Rousseau. Political science tried to connect to Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Nietzsche, Machiavelli, and Otto von Bismarck, for instance. Economics copied the thought of Adam Smith, […]"

2. (obsolete) Unrestrained, licentious.Examples: "Myself, my brother, and this grieved count, Did see her, hear her, at that hour last night, Talk with a ruffian at her chamber-window; Who hath indeed, most like a liberal villain, Confess'd the vile encounters they have had A thousand times in secret."obsolete

3. (politics) Open to political or social changes and reforms associated with either classical or modern liberalism.Examples: "Endorsing the liberal anti-interventionist credo that the marketplace should act as the "site of verification," the advocates of white lead opposed government intervention for the sake of open economic competition, which they claimed revealed its true value and thus should be the sole determinant: "When the railways were built, the stage coaches disppeared; they died a timely death. If zinc white is truly superior to white lead, it will kill us in the marketplace, but the government should not intervene." These were the words of Expert-Bezançon, in his February 1903 deposition to the parliamentary committee examining the bill for banning lead-based pigments in paint."