borderline
Americanadjective
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on or near a border or boundary.
-
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.
-
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
-
approaching bad taste or obscenity.
He made several borderline remarks that offended them.
noun
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null border line.
-
a border or boundary.
The town of Tiverton, Rhode Island, rests on the once-disputed Massachusetts borderline.
-
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.
-
-
a person with borderline personality disorder.
noun
-
a border; dividing line; line of demarcation
-
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.
See Examples For:
“On ‘Hot Ones’ you have those moments of people who are struggling, who are vulnerable, who are in a borderline state of panic.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 24, 2026
“And my daughter fought for a long time with extreme mental health, borderline personality disorder, other things, and did the best she could, until she couldn’t.”
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 24, 2026
Within a legal profession that venerates judges and worships the Supreme Court, this is borderline heresy.
From Slate ● Jul. 20, 2026
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
They grew quickly and could be harvested within a few months of sowing, a big advantage for incipient farmers still on the borderline between nomadic hunters and settled villagers.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
They move freely, obscuring borderlines between categories that once loomed like separate land masses: jazz and chamber music; acoustic and electric ensembles; songs and improvised forms.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 27, 2026
Global warming also has had its way with borderlines.
From Washington Post ● May 7, 2020
When one actually thinks of the behemoth task that was accomplished back then in the planning, designing and implementing of the New York subway, it almost borderlines on magical.
From New York Times ● Jan. 3, 2018
Up to 15 million people left their homes to begin a new life in India or Pakistan, and by September 1947 the formal exchange of population across the Punjab borderlines had become government policy.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 5, 2017
Such a distribution was artificial but, once made, necessarily influenced the borderlines to the north and south.
From Area Handbook for Albania by Elpern, Sarah Jane
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.
