In the famous debate on liberty and necessity with Bishop Bramhall, Thomas Hobbes claimed to be following the «common use» of the «common people». Was Hobbes justi- fied to invoke seventeenth-century ordinary language in support of his view on will and liberty? This paper investigates the definitions and semantic ranges of will and liberty in Latin-English and English dictionaries between 1538 and 1684. The dictionaries show affinities with Hobbes on will as desire and liberty as absence of impediments. This paper contributes to the understanding of the development of a philosophical English vocabu- lary prior to the end of Latin as the transnational philosophical language.