Rhodesia

American  

[roh-dee-zhuh] / roʊˈdi ʒə /

noun

1. (asSouthern Rhodesia ) a former British colony in southern Africa: declared independence 1965; name changed to Zimbabwe 1979.

2. a historical region in southern Africa that comprised the British territories of Northern Rhodesia (nowZambia ) and Southern Rhodesia (nowZimbabwe ).

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Rhodesia British  

/ rəʊˈdiːʃə, -zɪə /

noun

1. a former name (1964–79) for Zimbabwe

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Rhodesia Cultural  

1. Former name of Zimbabwe, a nation in southeastern Africa.

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Discover More

Rhodesia was named for Cecil Rhodes, the English industrialist whose British South Africa Company colonized the region at the end of the nineteenth century. He also founded the Rhodes Scholarships for study at Oxford University.

Other Word Forms

• Rhodesian
  adjective

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Rhodesia

Our family narrowly escaped certain death in Nazi Germany and settled in Rhodesia.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 24, 2026

Furmanovsky grew up in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, before moving to London at the age of 11, which she called a "traumatic change".

From BBC ● Mar. 21, 2024

In the 1970s, Beijing built the Tazara Railway from landlocked Zambia to Tanzania’s Dar es Salaam port, allowing copper exports to circumvent white-minority-ruled Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa.

From Washington Times ● Mar. 31, 2023

In addition, Portugal objected that it controlled the land between its colonies of Angola and Mozambique, encompassing much of what Rhodes claimed as part of Rhodesia.

From Textbooks ● Dec. 14, 2022

One of the first of these men was Jimmy April, an MK officer who had trained under Joe Slovo and had fought against the enemy in Rhodesia.

From "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela

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