the.com/free throw

means An uncontested shot from the foul line, awarded after certain fouls or violations, worth one point and taken without any defender allowed to interfere.

from Straightforward compound from 'free' (unimpeded, uncontested) plus 'throw' (the act of shooting the ball) — the term simply describes what it is: a throw at the basket that's free of defensive interference. It emerged alongside basketball itself, invented by James Naismith in 1891, as the sport quickly needed a penalty mechanism for fouls; the free throw line and its one-shot-no-defense format were formalized in the early rules as the game standardized in the following decades.