Definition of "free state"

A political entity whose political status is less than that of a fully sovereign nation-state, as with the former Congo Free State and the former Irish Free State.  examples

A Federal state, with allegiance to a larger entity, as currently with Germany, and earlier, the relationship between the states of the Holy Roman Empire and the Emperor, and later, the states of the German Empire under the Hohenzollerns.  examples

An independent or autonomous political entity whose formal status and relationship to other states is undefined.  examples

A republic or commonwealth, as with the former Orange Free State, and especially as used for the current United Kingdom to refer to the Commonwealth period under Cromwell.  examples

(engineering) A condition of not being supported or constrained by outside forces.  examples

(US, historical) Before the American Civil War, any of the states in which the owning of slaves was not legal.

(grammar) A noun form in Afroasiatic languages contrasting with the construct state by the noun not being dependent (more commonly called absolute state, or indeterminate state if the specific language contrasts a determinate state with the construct state).  examples