Reader question:

 I was lucky to be a free-range kid. Could you explain “free-range”?

Well folks the above expression appeared quite frequently on our bulletin board system (bbs) so let’s get down to business and solve the riddle.

To begin the expression “free range” usually relates to animals - often chickens, cows or pigs that range or go looking freely for food, rather than being closed in a cage or pen or yard.

The idea behind this is that animals allowed to wander about and be free will be happier and healthier and thus be better for human consumption.

Likewise those animals that are kept in a cage or are factory reared are often called ‘battery chickens’ or ‘battery cows’.

Often because such animals are locked up all day and are fed the same miserable food every day they can become sick and pass on disease to humans.

Other people also think it is cruel to merely lock up animals just for humans to exploit.

So getting back to our example of, “I was lucky to be a free-range kid”, the idea here is that the child was allowed a fair amount of freedom by their parents while growing up.

Compare this to others who are always at school, always doing homework or going to extra lessons and never have any time to be free or to play – if we wanted to joke we could call them ‘battery kids’.

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本文仅代表作者本人观点，与本网立场无关。欢迎大家讨论学术问题，尊重他人，禁止人身攻击和发布一切违反国家现行法律法规的内容。

以上讨论问题来自翻吧（translate.chinadaily.com.cn）

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