(Also as one and as two words.)
1. A land or district on or near the border between two countries or districts; particularly the border district between England and Scotland.
1813. Hogg, Queen’s Wake. Leyden came from Border land.
1849. Grote, Greece, II. lv. A neutral strip of borderland.
1876. Green, Short Hist., iv. § 1 (1882), 158. Offa tore from Wales the border land between the Severn and the Wye.
2. fig.
1823. Lamb, Elia, Ser. I. xi. (1865), 88. Between the affirmative and the negative there is no border-land with him.
1863. Longf., Wayside Inn, Prel. 132. The twilight that surrounds The border-land of old romance.
1878. Bosw. Smith, Carthage, 370. That borderland between fact and fiction.
