1 done willingly, not because you are forced:
a voluntary agreement / arrangement * Attendance on the course is purely voluntary. * to pay voluntary contributions into a pension fund * (BrE) He took voluntary redundancy.
OPPCOMPULSORY
2 [usuallybeforenoun] (of work) done by people who choose to do it without being paid:
I do some voluntary work at the local hospital. * She works there on a voluntary basis. * voluntary services / bodies / agencies / organizations (= organized, controlled or supported by people who choose to do this and are usually not paid) * the voluntary sector (= organizations which are set up to help people and which do not make a profit, for example charities)
3 [onlybeforenoun] (of a person) doing a job without wanting to be paid for it:
a voluntary worker
4 (technical) (of movements of the body) that you can control
OPPINVOLUNTARY
noun (plural voluntaries) a piece of music played before, during or after a church service, usually on an ORGAN
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
Where does this definition of voluntary come from?
This entry for voluntary is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is voluntary a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, voluntary is tagged as adjective.
Does voluntary appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — voluntary appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.