Border States
Americanplural noun
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U.S. History. the Slave States of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, which refused to secede from the Union in 1860–61.
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the U.S. states touching the Canadian border.
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certain countries of central and northern Europe that border on the former Soviet Union and belonged to the Russian Empire: Finland, Poland (prior to 1940), Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
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.
Despite his comparative obscurity, Agnew will have wide appeal in the crucial Border States and possibly even in the Deep South.
From Time Magazine Archive
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Smith would have to carry most of the Border States to be within striking distance.
From Time Magazine Archive
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He owed his victory to Illinois, most of the smaller states in the West and Middle West, and particularly to the South and the Border States.
From Time Magazine Archive
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For 25 years before the Civil War no one knew which way the Border States would go if war came.
From Time Magazine Archive
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They might possibly have carried that election; and their strength in the Border States would have enabled them, sooner or later, to check the extension of slavery without bringing on civil war.
From Liberty In The Nineteenth Century by Holland, Frederic May
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.