Over time, the word has come to have a more generic meaning, anything from a noun describing a plausible yet fictional country, to an adjective ("Freedonian") used to characterize a place like the Freedonia of Duck Soup.
449–50, Mitchill, wrote the following under the heading of "Medical and Philosophical News": Proposal to the American literati, and to all the citizens of the United States, to employ the following names and epithets for the country and nation to which they belong; which, at the distance of 27 years from the declaration and of 20 years from the acknowledgment of their independence, are to this day destitute of proper geographical and political denominations, whereby they may be aptly distinguished from the other regions and peoples of the earth: Fredon, the aggregate noun for the whole territory of the United States.
Fredon is probably better supplied with the materials of her own history than Britain, France, or any country in the world, and the reason is obvious, for the attention of the Fredonians was much sooner directed, after their settlement, to the collection and preservations of their facts and records than that of the Dutch and Irish.
And thereby the time will be noted carefully when a native of this land, on being asked who he is and whence he came, began to answer in one word that he is a Frede, instead of using the tedious circumlocution that he was "a citizen of the United States of America."
[2] In December 1826, a group of Anglo-American settlers and filibusters led by Empresario Haden Edwards in what is now Texas, declared the "Republic of Fredonia" centered in the town of Nacogdoches.
The republic was short-lived however, lasting only from December 21, 1826 – January 23, 1827, when Mexican soldiers and Anglo militia men from Stephen F. Austin's colony put the rebellion down.
In the Marx Brother's film Duck Soup, the tiny fictitious country of Freedonia ("Land of the Brave, and Free") is suffering from severe financial problems; government leaders request a $20 million loan from wealthy Freedonian widow Mrs. Gloria Teasdale (Margaret Dumont) to keep the nation afloat.
Firefly insults and angers Ambassador Trentino (Louis Calhern) from the neighboring nation of Sylvania, which leads Freedonia into war.
[citation needed] In the Sierra Entertainment PC game Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire (1990), the character Ali Chica is a parody of Chico Marx.
[citation needed] In the 1990s, the satirical magazine Spy pulled a practical joke on several members of the United States Congress.
Cregg, Sam Seaborn, and Toby Ziegler are discussing the relevancy of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in a post-Soviet world.
[citation needed] In the game Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek (2007), the character Yanni Volkstaia is an Olympic skier from Fredonia.
Although the usage may be intended simply as a plausible name for a country of which the listener (William Shakespeare in the former case) has not heard, it is specifically linked to Duck Soup in at least one official reference work.