free form
noun
a shape having an irregular contour, chiefly used in nonrepresentational art and industrial design.
free form
1 Americannoun
-
a shape having an irregular contour, chiefly used in nonrepresentational art and industrial design.
-
Linguistics. a linguistic form that can occur by itself, as fire, book, or run.
free-form
2
American
[free-fawrm, free-fawrm]
/ ˈfriˌfɔrm, ˈfriˈfɔrm /
Or
freeform
adjective
-
characterized by free form.
free-form sculpture.
-
not organized or planned in a conventional way.
a free-form international conglomerate.
-
encouraged to function or evolve without advance planning; spontaneous.
free-form management.
adverb
free form
British
noun
adjective
Etymology
Origin of free form1
First recorded in 1945–50
Origin of free-form2
First recorded in 1950–55
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
But celebrities don’t have a lock on this free form, open-mic talent show.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 30, 2020
Many were drawn to slam poetry’s free form, which rewards wordplay and can be less intimidating for those with no formal education.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 28, 2018
For one moment, there is only the molten dawn sun lighting the sky a poet red and the air racing cooly past him as he drops in free form flight.
From Slate ● Feb. 19, 2018
So Twitter appears stuck between implementing some safeguards that could change the free form nature of its service and continuing to passively enable the harassment of its users.
From The Verge ● Jul. 22, 2016
He regarded it as a synonym of the fantasia, which was a free form made up of fugato instrumental passages.
From An Autobiography by Stravinsky, Igor
Its asymmetrical, free-form plate-glass top rests on a base made of two identical, U-shaped wooden legs —a configuration that blurs distinctions between primitivism and classicism, the organic and the engineered, furniture and art.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 1, 2026
The games people make will also have to meet suitability criteria, and those which include social or free-form elements will not be default-available on the Kids and Select accounts.
From BBC ● Apr. 13, 2026
Ellen Schwartz, 82, told me this Canadian-founded group operates without recognized leaders — an “international free-form group of gaggles of grannies,” is how she put it, and I wrote it all down for Kash Patel.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 19, 2025
The free-form jazz in the film makes the atmosphere almost farcical, a choice that feels even more strange when Bong introduces the apartment complex’s janitor, who has a taste for dog meat.
From Salon ● Mar. 25, 2025
Her spiky, free-form locs are improvisational jazz; they abide by no rules.
From "Split the Sky" by Marie Arnold
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
