a. [f. L. contermin-us having a common border or boundary, bordering upon (f. con- together with + terminus boundary, limit) + -OUS.]
1. Having a common boundary, bordering upon (each other).
1631. Heylin, St. George, 151. The two people mention’d in the Gospell were conterminous.
1652. Needham, trans. Selden’s Mare Cl., 27. The Dominion of the whole Earth … and of the conterminous Aer.
1677. Hale, Prim. Orig. Man., II. vii. 192. In the Ports of the Sea conterminous to those Continents.
1846. Grote, Hist. Greece, I. xv. I. 451. A township conterminous with Ilium.
1878. Lecky, Eng. in 18th C., II. viii. 491. Defending the side of Germany conterminous to France.
1880. A. R. Wallace, Isl. Life, I. ii. 18. Allied species, whose ranges are separate but conterminous.
2. Meeting at their ends.
a. 1734. North, Life J. North (1826), III. 324. It often falls out that extremes are conterminous, and as contraries illustrate each other.
1862. Todhunter, Euclid (1876), 256, note. Let the triangle DEF be applied to the triangle ABC so that the bases may coincide, the equal sides be conterminous and the vertices fall on opposite sides of the base.
3. Coincident in their boundaries; exactly coextensive.
1817. Knox & Jebb, Corr., II. 314. Observe, that our Roman Catholic and church of England parishes, are not exactly conterminous.
1875. Bryce, Holy Rom. Emp., ii. (ed. 5), 13. Christianity as well as civilization became conterminous with the Roman Empire.
b. Exactly coextensive in time, range, sense, etc.
1855. Ess. Intuitive Morals, 26. Were the whole law precisely conterminous with our desires.
1861. Times, 10 Oct. The language of Catullus is less conterminous with our own than that of any popular Latin poet.
1885. R. L. & F. Stevenson, Dynamiter, xiv. 204. You name a good influence, but one that need not be conterminous with life.
