mason-dixon line
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.58 in modern English
24
Scrabble Score
14
Letters
4
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
name
The boundary line between Pennsylvania and Maryland, as run (1764–1767) by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, that, before abolition, defined part of the northern boundary of states in which slavery was permitted.
name
The boundary between the free and slave states at the time of the American Civil War, or between states with different segregationist policies in the Jim Crow era.
name
Alternative letter-case form of Mason-Dixon Line.
Example Sentences
- "I am indebted to you for a topic to deny to the Pensylvania claim to a line 39 complete degrees from the equator. As an advocate I shall certainly insist on it; but I wish they would compromise by an extension of Mason & Dixon's line. — They do not agree to the temporary line proposed by our assembly."
- "The Virginia gentlemen offer to divide exactly the 40th degree with us, […] Perhaps we would be as well off with Mason and Dixon's''' line continued."
- "Suffysit to say I got across Mason & Dixie's line safe at last."
- "[…] and he tell'd me Georgia would go for me, arter^([sic]) the Gineral^([sic]), as soon as any north of mason and dickson^([sic])."
- "The epistles are not dated far apart; and in the second, the writer, who dwelleth near ‘Mason and Dixon,’ descants upon the awful climate hereabout in the summer months."
- "The Soviet press was disseminating in Africa and Asia stories about black children in the South being denied adequate schooling, black accident victims dying because no white hospital in the South would admit them, and African diplomats being refused access to white restaurants and washrooms while traveling south of the Mason-Dixon line."
Etymology
Inflected Forms
the Mason–Dixon Line (canonical)
Mason and Dixon line (alternative)
Mason's and Dixon's line (alternative)