TERRITORY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does territory mean? 

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

1. a region marked off for administrative or other purposes

2. an area of knowledge or interest

3. the geographical area under the jurisdiction of a sovereign state

  Familiarity information: TERRITORY used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• TERRITORY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A region marked off for administrative or other purposes

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Synonyms:

district; dominion; territorial dominion; territory

Hypernyms ("territory" is a kind of...):

region (a large indefinite location on the surface of the Earth)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "territory"):

administrative district; administrative division; territorial division (a district defined for administrative purposes)

British West Africa (the former British territories of western Africa, including Nigeria, Cameroon, Gambia, Togo, Sierra Leone, and the Gold Coast)

British East Africa (the former British territories of eastern Africa, including Kenya, Tanganyika, Uganda, and Zanzibar)

trust territory; trusteeship (a dependent country; administered by another country under the supervision of the United Nations)

possession (a territory that is controlled by a ruling state)

associated state; protectorate (a state or territory partly controlled by (but not a possession of) a stronger state but autonomous in internal affairs; protectorates are established by treaty)

mandate; mandatory (a territory surrendered by Turkey or Germany after World War I and put under the tutelage of some other European power until they are able to stand by themselves)

jurisdiction (in law; the territory within which power can be exercised)

community; residential area; residential district (a district where people live; occupied primarily by private residences)

border district; borderland; march; marchland (district consisting of the area on either side of a border or boundary of a country or an area)

city district (a district of a town or city)

congressional district (a territorial division of a state; entitled to elect one member to the United States House of Representatives)

development (a district that has been developed to serve some purpose)

enclave (an enclosed territory that is culturally distinct from the foreign territory that surrounds it)

palatinate (a territory under the jurisdiction of a count palatine)

goldfield (a district where gold is mined)

Instance hyponyms:

Louisiana Purchase (territory in the western United States purchased from France in 1803 for $15 million; extends from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada)

Kordofan (a mountainous province of central Sudan)

Darfur (an impoverished region of western Sudan)

Catalonia (a region of northeastern Spain)

Castile; Castilla (a region of central Spain; a former kingdom that comprised most of modern Spain and united with Aragon to form Spain in 1479)

Aragon (a region of northeastern Spain; a former kingdom that united with Castile in 1479 to form Spain (after the marriage of Ferdinand V and Isabella I))

American Samoa; AS; Eastern Samoa (a United States territory on the eastern part of the island of Samoa)

KwaZulu-Natal; Natal (a region of eastern South Africa on the Indian Ocean)

Malaya; Peninsular Malaysia; West Malaysia (the region of Malaysia on the Malay Peninsula; shares a land border with Thailand to the north)

East Malaysia (the part of Malaysia that is on the island of Borneo)

Lothian Region (a district in southeast central Scotland (south side of the Firth of Forth) and the location of Edinburgh)

Galloway (a district in southwestern Scotland)

Lake District; Lakeland (a popular tourist area in northwestern England including England's largest lake and highest mountain)

Acre (a territory of western Brazil bordering on Bolivia and Peru)

Northern Mariana Islands; Northern Marianas (a self-governing territory comprising all of the Mariana Islands except Guam)

Northern Territory (a territory in north central Australia)

Yukon; Yukon Territory (a territory in northwestern Canada; site of the Klondike gold rush in the 1890s)

Nunavut (an Arctic territory in northern Canada created in 1999 and governed solely by the Inuit; includes the eastern part of what was the Northwest Territories and most of the islands of the Arctic Archipelago)

Northwest Territories (a large territory in northwestern Canada; part is now Nunavut)

Acadia (the French-speaking part of the Canadian Maritime Provinces)

Papal States (the temporal dominions belonging to the pope (especially in central Italy))

Boeotia (a district of ancient Greece to the northwest of Athens)

Attica (the territory of Athens in ancient Greece where the Ionic dialect was spoken)

Athos; Mount Athos (an autonomous area in northeastern Greece that is the site of several Greek Orthodox monasteries founded in the tenth century)

Palatinate; Pfalz (a territory in southwestern Germany formerly ruled by the counts palatine)

Derivation:

territorial (of or relating to a territory)

Sense 2

Meaning:

An area of knowledge or interest

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Context example:

his questions covered a lot of territory

Hypernyms ("territory" is a kind of...):

area (a subject of study)

Sense 3

Meaning:

The geographical area under the jurisdiction of a sovereign state

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Synonyms:

soil; territory

Context example:

American troops were stationed on Japanese soil

Hypernyms ("territory" is a kind of...):

geographic area; geographic region; geographical area; geographical region (a demarcated area of the Earth)

Derivation:

territorial (of or relating to a territory)

 Context examples 

The territory within which power can be exercised.

(Jurisdiction, NCI Thesaurus)

The territories from distinct chromosomes do not appear to overlap, preventing an intermingling of the decondensed chromatin.

(Chromosome Territory, NCI Thesaurus)

These territories are threatened by society itself.

(Brazilian savanna unprotected, study finds, Agência Brasil)

They might attack, however, if they feel threatened, are sick, or are protecting their young or territory.

(Animal Bites, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

However, as climate change raises global air temperatures, it is possible that East Antarctic glaciers could start melting, a change that could make the ice sheet shift back into unstable territory.

(Massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet has history of instability, National Science Foundatio)

The dominant model for understanding animal movement is that the most important factors are an island's size and its distance from the colonizing animals' territory.

(Fossil discovery adds to understanding of how geological changes affected evolution of mammalian life, National Science Foundation)

Branches of one nerve may cover a wide area and overlap the territories of other nerves.

(Free Nerve Ending, NCI Thesaurus)

EXAMPLE(S): "European Union" might be the name of the territory comprised by the EU member states.

(Place Name, NCI Thesaurus/BRIDG)

Many Pacific Island countries and territories will lose 50-80 per cent of marine species by the end of the 21st century if climate change and global warming continue unchecked, reports a new study.

(Pacific island fish migrating to cooler seas, SciDev.Net)

The part of France situated in Western Europe, including Corsica, as opposed to the overseas departments and territories of the French Republic.

(Metropolitan France, NCI Thesaurus)