borderline
Americanadjective
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on or near a border or boundary.
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having an uncertain, indeterminate, or debatable status.
He was a borderline case for admission to the program—please encourage him to apply again next year.
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not quite meeting accepted, expected, or average standards.
Discover specific how-to strategies for turning a borderline student into a confident achiever.
- Synonyms:
- marginal, unsure, precarious, doubtful
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approaching bad taste or obscenity.
He made several borderline remarks that offended them.
noun
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null border line.
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a border or boundary.
The town of Tiverton, Rhode Island, rests on the once-disputed Massachusetts borderline.
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a notional dividing line.
Often the borderline between safety and toxicity is very small, and every year thousands of fish die as a consequence of chemical overdosing.
-
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a person with borderline personality disorder.
noun
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a border; dividing line; line of demarcation
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an indeterminate position between two conditions or qualities
the borderline between friendship and love
adjective
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of borderline
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
For Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Andrew Giuliani, the executive director of the White House’s World Cup task force and son of Rudy Giuliani, the borderline call was an injustice that demanded executive intervention.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jul. 6, 2026
"Knowing that we've got here... and I'm actually going to be able to play it, is borderline a miracle," he added.
From Barron's • Jun. 24, 2026
The 70-year-old is one of the most respected and influential coaches in the game, and that reputation has been earned from his borderline obsessive dedication to preparation for every single match he oversees.
From BBC • Jun. 4, 2026
Typical rush hour congestion already creates borderline unsafe conditions for boarding and exiting popular junctions like Penn Station and Secaucus, partially because these rail lines already run over capacity.
From Salon • Jun. 3, 2026
Sigils, as I recall from some dark comic book series, are symbols of medieval magic from back in the day when so few people were literate that literacy itself was seen as borderline magical.
From "Challenger Deep" by Neal Shusterman
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
