INDEPENDENCE n. 2 definitions
The state or quality of being independent; freedom from dependence; exemption from reliance on, or control by, others; self- subsistence or maintenance; direction of one's own affairs without interference. Let fortune do her worst, . . . as long as she never makes us lose our honesty and our independence. Pope.…
INFLECTIVE a.
tin, consisting largely of stems with variable terminations or suffixes which were once independent words. English is both agglutinative, as, manlike, headache, and inflective, as, he, his, him. Cf. Agglutinative.