BALKANS

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does Balkans mean? 

• BALKANS (noun)
  The noun BALKANS has 3 senses:

1. the major mountain range of Bulgaria and the Balkan Peninsula

2. a large peninsula in southeastern Europe containing the Balkan Mountain Range

3. the Balkan countries collectively

  Familiarity information: BALKANS used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BALKANS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The major mountain range of Bulgaria and the Balkan Peninsula

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Synonyms:

Balkan Mountain Range; Balkan Mountains; Balkans

Instance hypernyms:

chain; chain of mountains; mountain chain; mountain range; range; range of mountains (a series of hills or mountains)

Holonyms ("Balkans" is a part of...):

Balkan Peninsula; Balkans (a large peninsula in southeastern Europe containing the Balkan Mountain Range)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A large peninsula in southeastern Europe containing the Balkan Mountain Range

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Synonyms:

Balkan Peninsula; Balkans

Instance hypernyms:

peninsula (a large mass of land projecting into a body of water)

Meronyms (parts of "Balkans"):

Balkan Wars (two wars (1912-1913) that were fought over the last of the European territories of the Ottoman Empire and that left the area around Constantinople (now Istanbul) as the only Ottoman territory in Europe)

Balkan country; Balkan nation; Balkan state (any one of the countries on the Balkan Peninsula)

Albania; Republic of Albania (a republic in southeastern Europe on the Adriatic coast of the Balkan Peninsula)

Croatia; Hrvatska; Republic of Croatia (a republic in the western Balkans in south-central Europe in the eastern Adriatic coastal area; formerly part of the Habsburg monarchy and Yugoslavia; became independent in 1991)

Macedon; Macedonia; Makedonija (the ancient kingdom of Philip II and Alexander the Great in the southeastern Balkans that is now divided among modern Macedonia and Greece and Bulgaria)

Thrace (an ancient country and wine producing region in the east of the Balkan Peninsula to the north of the Aegean Sea; colonized by ancient Greeks; later a Roman province; now divided between Bulgaria and Greece and Turkey)

Macedonia (landlocked republic on the Balkan Peninsula; achieved independence from Yugoslavia in 1991)

Republic of Turkey; Turkey (a Eurasian republic in Asia Minor and the Balkans; on the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, the Young Turks, led by Kemal Ataturk, established a republic in 1923)

Balkan Mountain Range; Balkan Mountains; Balkans (the major mountain range of Bulgaria and the Balkan Peninsula)

Meronyms (members of "Balkans"):

Balkan (an inhabitant of the Balkan Peninsula)

Holonyms ("Balkans" is a part of...):

Europe (the 2nd smallest continent (actually a vast peninsula of Eurasia); the British use 'Europe' to refer to all of the continent except the British Isles)

Sense 3

Meaning:

The Balkan countries collectively

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Instance hypernyms:

European country; European nation (any one of the countries occupying the European continent)

 Context examples 

A chronic tubulointerstitial nephropathy that affects people in certain rural areas along the Danube river in the Balkans.

(Balkan Endemic Nephropathy, NCI Thesaurus)

Sometimes we saw him passing in lonely majesty to his inner sanctum, with his eyes staring vaguely and his mind hovering over the Balkans or the Persian Gulf.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)