1. To free someone from bondage, oppression, or restraint; to liberate: The Women's Lib(eration) movement would like to emancipate women from being restricted to their homes.
2. In law, to sever the legal authority over one’s own offspring: Mildred was quite smart and received her high school diploma while she was just 15, enabling her to start her university education in another city and being independent; therefore, being emancipated from control by her mother and father.
3. The age at which a person is granted by law the rights and responsibilities of an adult: In some places, the legal code states that minors, starting at 16, are allowed to smoke cigarettes, even though their parents don’t smoke themselves and are of a completely different opinion.
4. Etymology: from Latin ex- "out, away" + mancipare, "to deliver, to transfer, to sell"; from mancipum, "ownership"; from manus, "hand" + capere, "to take".

This word comes from Latin emancipare, which originally meant "free from parental power". This was a compound verb that was formed from the prefix ex-, "out of" and mancipium, "ownership:; and referred in Roman law to the freeing of a son from the legal authority of the male (pater) head of the family (patria potestas), thus making him responsible for himself in law.

The association of the verb with the "freeing of slaves", the basis of the present English meaning, is a modern development.