Yup, “braza” sounds technical over here.
This is the right answer.
But plenty of people use “free” colloquially and we all know what they mean.
I was born in '75 in the US, and the stroke, as I know it, is the “crawl” or “Australian crawl.” “Freestyle” to me means “choose your style.”
Certainly it started that way, anyway. Granted, it’s been many years since I’ve been a competitive swimmer so my memory may be hazy, but I seem to recall that you could still get disqualified from “freestyle” races for using incorrect form. In other words, if you tried to butterfly in the freestyle race, you’d get disqualified; so “freestyle” has become de facto the front crawl, not “any stroke you want.”
This was high school though, so gods know the rules may have been different than normal.
In Hebrew - חתירה - “rowing”. Makes sense, honestly.
(Competitions call it “free style”, like everywhere else)
Agree with Colophon.
Breast stroke, back stroke (sometimes called back crawl) and butterfly all have strict rules on style such as legs and arms must have a symmetry in breast and butterfly, how to touch the end of the pool (with TWO hands in breast and butterfly) etc.
In Freestyle (free), as it states, you can swim any way you like provided you do not touch the bottom or use the ropes, you must touch the end of the pool on each lap and at the end you must touch the timing plate. Some part of your body must break the surface at all times except the first 15m of each length. The only restriction is that in a medley race, you cannot use any of the defined strokes again in the freestyle part, you must use a different style.
Front crawl is a stroke that has no style rules as it is NOT a recognised specific stroke. It is the stroke used in freestyle because it is the fastest and you would be a fool not to use it, but you can if you wish and don’t mind losing.
So front crawl (a stroke) is NOT the same as freestyle (an event) but is the universal stroke used in the event.
There is another stroke, hinted at in some posts, which I learned as “English backstroke” and is a bit like butterfly on your back where both arms are thrown above your head out of the water and pull down in the water creating thrust. As far as I know it is not a FINA defined stroke.
In French
Brasse (=fathom? for breast)
Libre (=free)
Dos (=back)
Papillon (=butterfly)
When I was a kid learning to swim it was the ‘over-arm’ stroke. Australian Crawl was a band. 
By traditional rules doing butterfly in a freestyle race is perfectly valid, unless it’s the freestyle stage of a medley. In that case, freestyle is “anything you want that’s not a different stage in the medley.” So you might have seen a DQ for that. Or it might have just been a bogus DQ and nobody knew any better.
Me too, but when my daughter learned it at the Y, they called it “chicken, bird, soldier” (after the arm movements involved).
Whew, I was thinking I was the only one. Yes, overarm.
Me too. I was thinking “Haven’t any of these people heard of overarm?”
I too call it swimming.
“Australian crawl” has started an earworm…
This summer I swam in a public place
And a reservoir, to boot,
At the latter I was informal,
At the former I wore my suit, I wore my swimming suit.
When I first used the term “Australian crawl” in front of Mrs P she said “huh?” and I had to explain to her what I meant.
She (British) then sneered at me (Australian) that this must be some sort of stupid Australian linguistic credit-grab that no one outside of Australia used. I have been wondering ever since if this was correct.
Good to hear various US’ian’s confirming that this isn’t merely an Australian affectation.
We’ve had several answers for Spanish, but like several other posters what I was taught is that estilo libre actually refers not to a specific style, but to a competition rule, whereas crawl (written crol if you’re being academic, or crawl by most sports reporters) is a reference to an actual style.
If a freestyle / estilo libre competition, the swimmers can use any style they like. They are currently all using crawl because that’s the most efficient style at the time; if someone else comes up with something better, then everybody will learn the new style. If some guy happened to be faster doing the backstroke, he could enter a freestyle competition doing backstroke. So, freestyle <> crawl and estilo libre <> crol/crawl, but it’s the kind of distinction you only get from the kind of people who think picking nits isn’t even a hobby, it’s a way of life, or during your swimming lessons.
Think about the arm gestures involved. You’re making the same gesture as measuring brazas or brazadas on a line or a bolt of cloth: bring the hands together, then separate them as far as they go, back together, back afar…
A brazada or braza is: the length fingertips to fingertips; the length by which a swimmer is propelled forward in one movement cycle; the whole set of movements which constitute that cycle.
The term free or freestyle has become to mean the front crawl stroke. However, if someone wanted to use the backstroke during a “freestyle” event that would be perfectly acceptable under the international swimming rules.
This isn’t 100% true now. One can for the most part do anything during a freestyle event, but if someone wanted to do a proper breaststroke they could get disqualified. In freestyle, butterfly and backstroke the swimmer has to surface before the 15 meter mark on the start and turns, there is no 15 meter mark in breaststroke. Also during freestyle the swimmer must remain on top of the water, or at least some part must be out of the water. In a breaststroke it is possible to be completely submerged.
But yes, for the most part it’s difficult to get DQ’ed in a freestyle event, the only ways I can think of is pushing off the bottom, though one can stand, pulling on the lane lines, being submerged after the 15 meter mark, or in my case, get out before one has done the proper distance.
I seem to have vague memories from my childhood (back in the 70’s-80’s) of some people doing butterfly in freestyle events on tv. A bit of google searching also showed that Phelps did this just a year ago although it appears that his rational was to use the event to practice his butterfly rather than that he thought it would be faster.
When I started competitive swimming back in the 1970s, the Australian crawl was the name of the stroke and freestyle was the name of the event in which the swimmer could choose his stroke. Over the years, the two have become synonymous. If you listen to the sportscasters calling the swimming events on air, they invariably call the crawl the freestyle.
It would be interesting to know whether crawl and freestyle became synonymous because people were overwhelmingly choosing the crawl for the freestyle events. I may have to bestir myself and look that up.
http://updatedwordsforum.forumotion.com/t72-front-crawl-or-freestyle
It appears I might not have been far off the mark.