Britain
Americannoun
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It is one of the world's leading industrialized nations.
Most of the settlers of the American colonies were British. The colonies remained under the British crown until the American Revolutionary War.
Britain declared war on Germany in 1939. Allied with the United States and the Soviet Union, the British, under the leadership of Winston Churchill, played an important role in defeating Germany.
At the height of its imperial power in the late nineteenth century, Britain boasted colonies and possessions around the globe. (See British Empire.)
A constitutional monarchy, Britain's government calls for the hereditary king or queen to perform mostly ceremonial functions. Parliament governs the country.
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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.
France and Britain housed small communities from former colonies—an immigration pattern so mundane that 1960s France let citizens of former West African colonies fly into Paris without a passport.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 2026
Britain on Thursday gave the green light to Paramount Skydance's $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros.
From Barron's ● Aug. 6, 2026
Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority found the Paramount-Warner combination would not restrict media competition in Britain.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 6, 2026
Politicians are now asking how Britain - the country of Edward Jenner, the "father of immunology" - could have allowed its immunisation rates to drop so low, and what could fix it.
From BBC ● Aug. 3, 2026
On September 3, 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany, but it was too late for the Poles.
From "Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow" by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
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.
