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borderland. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
borderland, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
borderland in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
borderland you have here. The definition of the word
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English
Alternative forms
Etymology
From border + land.
Noun
borderland (plural borderlands)
- Land near a border; marches.
- Synonym: marchland
- Hypernym: land
1644, David Hume, The History of the Houses of Douglas and Angus, Edinburgh: Evan Tyler, page 81:retaining Liddesdale and his other Borderlands and Offices in his owne person
- 1850, Charlotte Brontë, letter dated 16 March, 1850, in The Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell, London: Smith, Elder, 1857, Volume 2, Chapter , p. ,
- some of the ancient East Lancashire families, whose mansions lie on the hilly border-land between the two counties
1937, J. R. R. Tolkien, chapter 19, in The Hobbit, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1966, page 282:They came to the river that marked the very edge of the borderland of the Wild […]
2012, Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies, New York: Henry Holt, Part 1, Chapter 2, p. 68:[…] he pieces together his tale: arson, cattle raids, the usual borderlands story, ending in destitution, the making of orphans.
- (figuratively) An intermediate state, category, etc.
- Synonym: grey area
1911, W. E. B. Du Bois, chapter 25, in The Quest of the Silver Fleece, Chicago: McClurg, page 277:“Mr. Alwyn, the line between virtue and foolishness is dim and wavering, and I should hate to see you lost in that marshy borderland. […] ”
1937, Virginia Woolf, The Years, New York: Harcourt, Brace, page 21:But she did not look as if she were dying; she looked as if she might go on existing in this borderland between life and death for ever.
2019, Robert Harris, chapter 12, in The Second Sleep, London: Hutchinson:[…] he found himself in that frustrating mental state in which one is too exhausted to think productively and yet too alert to sleep, and in this restless borderland he lay for the remainder of the night […]
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