Northern Ireland
Americannoun
noun
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The Irish Republican Army (IRA), a nationalist organization dedicated to the unification of Ireland, has staged terrorist attacks on British troops in Northern Ireland, as well as other random terrorist attacks in Britain.
Demands for equal civil and economic rights by the Catholic minority, beginning in the late 1960s, led to a renewal of violence between Catholics and Protestants.
Northern Ireland was created in 1920, when Britain established separate parliaments for the parts of Ireland dominated by Protestants and by Roman Catholics. The Protestant portion remained in union with Britain.
A peace accord reached on Good Friday, 1998, provided for the restoration of home rule, which Britain had suspended in 1972 when it assumed direct control of Northern Ireland. By the terms of this accord, both Britain and the Republic of Ireland agreed to give up their constitutional claims on Northern Ireland. Voters in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland approved the accord later in 1998. The failure of the IRA to disarm threw this accord into jeopardy until recently. There is now reasonable hope for a settlement.
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.
Tens of thousands of people are expected to attend parades across Northern Ireland as the annual Twelfth of July commemorations take place.
From BBC ● Jul. 13, 2026
The dataset combined information from long running aging studies in 14 locations, including the United States, England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, four regions of Europe, Korea, Mexico, China, Malaysia, Brazil, and India.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 13, 2026
Born in 1947 in Northern Ireland, Neill emigrated to New Zealand at the age of 7.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 13, 2026
"For all those people in Northern Ireland, I say blame it on Jimmy and blame it on Liam, it's their fault," he joked.
From BBC ● Jul. 13, 2026
They were “Scotch-Irish”—that is, from the lowlands of Scotland, the northern counties of England, and Ulster in Northern Ireland.
From "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell
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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.