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.
For 25 years before the Civil War no one knew which way the Border States would go if war came.
From Time Magazine Archive
Senator from Kentucky, as the vice-presidential prospect most likely to help the ticket in the Border States and the South.
From Time Magazine Archive
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
He made a clean sweep of the Midwest, the Mountain and Border States, the West Coast, appeared to have lost only Arizona in the Southwest.
From Time Magazine Archive
But the Border States were as yet debatable ground; they might be retained by conciliation and compromise or alienated by hostile measures, whether directed against them or against the seceded States.
From Baltimore and The Nineteenth of April, 1861 A Study of the War by Brown, George William
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.
