free-range

[ free-reynj ]

adjective
  1. (of livestock and domestic poultry) permitted to graze or forage for grain, etc., rather than being confined to a feedlot or a small enclosure: a free-range pig.

  2. of, relating to, or produced by free-range animals: free-range eggs.

  1. Informal. noting or relating to a style of child rearing in which parents allow their children to move about without constant adult supervision:free-range kids;free-range parents.

Origin of free-range

1
First recorded in 1910–15

Words Nearby free-range

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

How to use free-range in a sentence

  • It impounds the deer, but gives free range to the wolf and to his as pitiless two-legged brother, the crust hunter.

    In New England Fields and Woods | Rowland E. Robinson
  • You'd better get your cow out of here; this isn't free range, you know.

    The Main Chance | Meredith Nicholson
  • Perhaps the males were allowed free range, the females only being permitted at stated seasons to accompany them.

  • I doubt not but that it likes him better than the tending of apricots when he has the free range of the ale-houses to work on.

    Judith Shakespeare | William Black
  • It is only when physical necessities have been met or ignored that the spirit of man has free range.

    The Gate of Appreciation | Carleton Noyes

British Dictionary definitions for free-range

free-range

adjective
  1. mainly British kept or produced in natural nonintensive conditions: free-range hens; free-range eggs

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012