Ruthenia

American  

[roo-thee-nee-uh, -theen-yuh] / ruˈθi ni ə, -ˈθin yə /

noun

1. a former province in E Czechoslovakia.

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Ruthenia British  

/ ruːˈθiːnɪə /

noun

1. Also called: Carpatho-Ukraine.  a region of E Europe on the south side of the Carpathian Mountains: belonged to Hungary from the 14th century, to Czechoslovakia from 1918 to 1939, and was ceded to the former Soviet Union in 1945; in 1991 it became part of the newly independent Ukraine

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Example Sentences

Imagine a geographical equivalent of “The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure” except that Sarawak, Ruthenia, Dahomey, the Republic of Cospaia and Neutral Moresnet actually existed.

From Washington Post

As the Austro-Hungarian empire fell apart at the end of World War One, historic Hungary was forced to cede what is now Slovakia, Vojvodina, Croatia, Slovenia, Ruthenia, the Burgenland and Transylvania to the new states of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, to a much-enlarged Romania, and even to Austria, a fellow loser in the war.

From BBC

My grandparents, I discovered, were born under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as citizens of extinct Ruthenia, and raised in neighboring Czechoslovakian towns in Transcarpathia, which is now in Ukraine.

From The New Yorker

All along, Mikova has had its own off-kilter identity as part of Ruthenia, a nation that existed as a political entity for just one day in 1939, but that survived for centuries as a separate culture and language in the borderlands between Slovakia, Ukraine and Poland.

From New York Times

Europeans called her Roxelana, “the maiden from Ruthenia,” a land in what is today Belarus and Ukraine.

From New York Times