borderline
Americanadjective
-
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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borderlines
plural
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null border line.
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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:
“This is the era of Claude and self-driving cars, and it’s just borderline embarrassing—for me, at least—to be lugging around a multivitamin bottle,” he said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 19, 2026
"Member states have increased their defence expenditure for a borderline country like Finland. That's a good thing," Stubb said.
From Barron's ● Sep. 15, 2026
"For patients at borderline risk, knowing their calcium score can help determine whether their risk is actually lower or higher than initially estimated, which can help guide treatment decisions," Shah explained.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 12, 2026
The Aston Martin car seems to be a midfield-level chassis now, somewhere around the borderline of getting into the final part of qualifying, depending on circuit layout, if it had a competitive engine.
From BBC ● Sep. 8, 2026
Two of the monkeys died and the third animal went into borderline shock, but somehow pulled through and survived.
From "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston
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 Sarah Jane Elpern
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