unshackle

From un- +‎ shackle.

unshackle (third-person singular simple present unshackles, present participle unshackling, simple past and past participle unshackled)

1. To remove shackles from someone or something.

   The captain ordered that the guards unshackle and release the prisoner, as he had served his sentence.

   • 2022 September 7, Philip Haigh, “Wireless coverage leaves us hanging on our telephones”, in RAIL, number 965, page 43:

     The sooner the railway can unshackle itself from DfT the better.

2. To remove restrictions or inhibitions; to allow full freedom and power.
   • 1818, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, On Poesy or Art

     Painting was, as it were, a new art, and being unshackled by old models it chose its own subjects, and took an eagle’s flight.

• (to remove shackles): unchain