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• Manifest Destiny
  Manifest Destiny

  noun

  the belief or doctrine, held chiefly in the middle and latter part of the 19th century, that it was the destiny of the U.S. to expand its territory over the whole of North America and to extend and enhance its political, social, and economic influences.
• manifest destiny
  manifest destiny

  A popular slogan of the 1840s. It was used by people who believed that the United States was destined — by God, some said — to expand across North America to the Pacific Ocean. The idea of manifest destiny was used to justify the acquisition of Oregon and large parts of the Southwest, including California. (See Mexican War.)

Manifest Destiny

American  

[man-uh-fest des-tuh-nee] / ˈmæn əˌfɛst ˈdɛs tə ni /

noun

1. the belief or doctrine, held chiefly in the middle and latter part of the 19th century, that it was the destiny of the U.S. to expand its territory over the whole of North America and to extend and enhance its political, social, and economic influences.

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Manifest Destiny British  

noun

1. (esp in the 19th-century US) the belief that the US was a chosen land that had been allotted the entire North American continent by God

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manifest destiny Cultural  

1. A popular slogan of the 1840s. It was used by people who believed that the United States was destined — by God, some said — to expand across North America to the Pacific Ocean. The idea of manifest destiny was used to justify the acquisition of Oregon and large parts of the Southwest, including California. (See Mexican War.)

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Usage

What is Manifest Destiny? Manifest destiny is an unofficial doctrine that characterized the U. S. attitude toward territorial expansion during the 19th and 20th centuries. It rested on the principles that American society was inherently of higher value than others, and that it was an imperative and inevitable mission to incorporate the rest of the North American continent into the United States. How is Manifest Destiny pronounced?[ man-uh-fest dest-uh-nee ]

Etymology

Origin of Manifest Destiny

First recorded in 1835–45

Example Sentences

Family patriarch Joseph Guinnip joined the throngs of people who headed west to take hold of America’s Manifest Destiny, leaving Steuben County, N.Y., in the 1830s.

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 15, 2026

As a child of the West, she was especially drawn to the films of John Wayne — that self-reliant man of action, Hollywood’s figurehead of Manifest Destiny.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 10, 2025

The novel’s heavyweight themes — Manifest Destiny, nihilism’s triumph over morality — are complemented by indelible imagery and sentences as expansive as desert skies.

From New York Times • Jun. 13, 2023

Mattie’s for-hire lawman/assassin, Rooster Cogburn, is much closer to a hair-trigger Falstaff than the resolute Manifest Destiny hero John Wayne depicted in Henry Hathaway’s 1969 film adaptation.

From Washington Post • Apr. 13, 2023

For example, many school textbooks uncritically accept the ideas expressed in the Doctrine of Discovery, Jefferson’s statement on expansion, and Manifest Destiny.

From "An Indigenous People’s History of the United States" by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz