Pacific Northwest

American  

[puh-sif-ik nawrth-west] / pəˈsɪf ɪk ˌnɔrθˈwɛst /

noun

1. an imprecisely defined region of North America that is commonly held to include the U.S. states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho and the Canadian province of British Columbia, with some designations extending the region south into northern California and/or north into Alaska and Yukon: often considered as much a historical, sociocultural region as a geographical one. PNW

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Pacific Northwest British  

noun

1. the region of North America lying north of the Columbia River and west of the Rockies

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Pacific Northwest

Canada’s and America’s regional and even ethnic identities map neatly onto one another, from the Pacific Northwest and the Great Plains to the Atlantic provinces and New England.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 2, 2026

"Sedimentary basins can amplify ground shaking during an earthquake and have been well-studied in other parts of the Pacific Northwest such as the Seattle Basin," Wirth explained.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 30, 2026

The fires became the highest firefighting priority in the US amid widespread drought and ongoing wildfires across the Pacific Northwest in early August.

From BBC ● Aug. 11, 2026

Before I relocated to the Pacific Northwest, I had only seen whales and other wildlife common to this region on TV.

From Salon ● Jul. 22, 2026

Chiefdoms have arisen pristinely even more often, in all of the same regions and in North America’s Southeast and Pacific Northwest, the Amazon, Polynesia, and sub-Saharan Africa.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond