Thursday, March 18, 2010

Network Dictionary — Freelance

September 30, 2008 by Greg Ferro · Leave a Comment 

This Post is Part of a Series — click for list on Network Dictionary»

Freelance — the term for a Knight of hon­our that is not pledged to a Lord. Modern Use: per­son who pur­sues a pro­fes­sion without a long-​​term com­mit­ment to an employer1

On the con­test field, each Knight would pledge his lance to the Lord who owns his fealty. A Knight with no such pledge was Free Lance. Free as in free­dom to choose his con­test and the nature of the fight.

A Free Lance Knight lived by win­ning con­tests and being paid by the nobil­ity to des­troy rob­ber bands and other poli­cing activ­it­ies or by par­ti­cip­at­ing in battles. Since the cost of armour, horse and weapons was the pro­hib­it­ive for ordin­ary folk, they were typ­ic­ally minor nobil­ity without pro­spects or sur­viv­ors of fail­ure of some noble house.

No doubt it was dan­ger­ous, since an injury would mean an end to his career. Thus, only the migh­ti­est or best war­ri­ors would vol­un­tar­ily choose to be a Free Lance. Many would look for new Lords to take their oath once they had proven them­selves on the con­test field or in battle.

Which, sounds very sim­ilar to mod­ern day freel­an­cing doesn’t it ? Including the health issues, once you are sick you are on your own.

<blockquote>I offered Richard the ser­vice of my Free Lances, and he refused them — I will lead them to Hull, seize on ship­ping, and embark for Flanders; thanks to the bust­ling times, a man of action will always find employment.

Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott, 1819. Free, of course, means “unbound”, not “without cost”.</blockquote>

Footnotes

  1. Wikipedia [back]
List of Posts in this series:
  1. Network Dictionary — Freelance
  2. Network Dictionary — Resume Generating Events
  3. Network Dictionary — Scalable
  4. Network Dictionary — magic hand wave
  5. Network Dictionary — NAT’d
  6. Network Dictionary — Pain Relief Technology
  7. Network Dictionary — work­shop
  8. Network Dictionary — Process Humping
  9. Network Dictionary — appsel­la­tion
  10. Network Dictionary — Spinning Rust
  11. Network Dictionary — Server Hugger
  12. Network Dictionary — Facepalm
  13. Network Dictionary — Nortard
  14. Network Dictionary — Ciscotist
  15. Network Dictionary — long­horn
  16. Network Dictionary — IEEEdiot
  17. Network Dictionary — foo
  18. Network Dictionary — Ethereal
  19. Network Dictionary — Signal Slope
  20. Network Dictionary — lever­age
  21. Network Dictionary — Microsoft Standard
  22. Network Dictionary — Brandalize
  23. Network Dictionary — Blamestorming
  24. Network Dictionary — CCIE Pounds
  25. Network Dictionary — borked
  26. Network Dictionary — tech­nobabble
  27. Network Dictionary — Markenauts
  28. Network Dictionary — Implementation
  29. Network Dictionary — Distributed Attention
  30. Network Dictionary — func­tion­al­ity
  31. Network Dictionary — cof­fice
  32. Network Dictionary — Rubber Duck Debugging
  33. Network Dictionary — Unicorn Tears
  34. Network Dictionary —  survivor’s bias
  35. Network Dictionary — IPocalypse
  36. Network Dictionary — slugged
  37. Network Dictionary — Project Manager
  38. Network Dictionary — Sanity Cheque
  39. Network Dictionary — goodth­ing
  40. Network Dictionary: Fun Detector
  41. Network Dictionary: Cock Blocked
  42. Network Dictionary — TACrathon
  43. Network Dictionary — Backhoe Attenuation
  44. Network Dictionary — heater
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