Definition of "context-free"

(linguistics) (Of a grammar) which generates sentences in stages, in such a way that at any intermediate stage, any piece of the sentence is enough to determine the corresponding piece at the next stage; that is, the stagewise transformation at a point does not depend on the rest of the sentence  examples

(linguistics) (Of a formal language) which can be decided by a pushdown automaton or a context-free grammar (sense 1)  examples