coterminous
Americanadjective
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having the same border or covering the same area.
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being the same in extent; coextensive in range or scope.
adjective
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having a common boundary; bordering; contiguous
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coextensive or coincident in range, time, scope, etc
Other Word Forms
- coterminously adverb
Etymology
Origin of coterminous
First recorded in 1790–1800; re-formation of conterminous ( def. ); co-
Explanation
Use the word coterminous to describe things that are equal in scope. If an earthquake in Australia was coterminous with the earthquake in China, that means it caused the same amount of destruction. The adjective coterminous derives from the Latin word conterminus, meaning "bordering upon, having a common boundary." When something is coterminous, it has the same boundaries, or is of equal extent or length of time as something else. The expansion of the American Old West was coterminous with the expansion of the Great American Frontier. Your mayor's term in office might be conterminous with increased access to social services.
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.
While satellite imagery has been around for decades, without recent advances in cloud computing, Lark says it was impossible to classify the nearly 2 billion acres of land in the coterminous U.S.
From Science Daily • May 29, 2024
Wilson mistakenly assumed that “nations” and “peoples” are synonyms, or that they designate coterminous entities.
From Washington Post • Feb. 22, 2022
An aerial view, the flattened sidewalk is coterminous with the flat paper on which Lawrence painted, filling it edge to edge.
From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 22, 2018
You will appreciate that this is impossible in the conventional way, as all points of the Bus's aisle will be coterminous with where you are currently standing.
From Nature • Oct. 24, 2017
And neither is coterminous with the ‘Amazonian rainforest.”
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
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.
