English Explanatory Dictionary

Medicine Line

English dictionary entry

Meanings

name
  1. The Canada-United States border; the 49th parallel north: a circle of latitude that is 49° north of Earth's equator.

Word forms

Medicine Line the Medicine Line

Etymology

First known attestation from 1880 where the term was described as being used "because no matter what [the Indians] have done [committed crimes] upon one side they feel perfectly secure after having arrived upon the other". A synonymous term which was attested earlier is medicine road from 1869 and ostensibly a calque of a Sioux term transcribed as "pejuta canku". Unrecorded use of the term or a similar one may date back more than a century earlier than the first attestation. See also medicine (“protective charm among the Native Americans”).

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