borderline

/ˈboɹ.dɚˌlaɪn/

borderline adjective: nearly; not clearly on one side or the other of a border or boundary, ambiguous. Also the ellipsis of borderline personality disorder.

Adjective

borderline (comparative more borderline, superlative most borderline)

Nearly; not clearly on one side or the other of a border or boundary, ambiguous.
- I would rather hire a talented layman than a university graduate with borderline qualifications.
- It recalls the business case for Scotland's reopening of the Borders Railway to Tweedbank, that British Rail closed in 1969. The review says the business case for this was at best borderline, but goes on to say that the case greatly underestimated passenger demand and that the railway Scotland...2023 September 6, Philip Haigh, “£30 billion plan to transform the rail network in Ireland”, in RAIL, number 991, page 25
Of questionable taste or acceptability; approaching bad taste.
- Your borderline remarks about my aunt’s dress destroyed my evening.
Exhibiting or characteristic of borderline personality disorder.
- She clearly has borderline and narcissistic features and she meets the criteria for a rapid cycling bipolar disorder, as well as for a generalized anxiety disorder. She has a severe binge eating disorder and has gained 65 pounds since[…]2003 December 8, Leslie Atkinson, Research Scientist at the Psychiatry Research Unit Susan Goldberg, Susan Goldberg, Attachment Issues in Psychopathology and Intervention, Routledge, →ISBN, page 192

Adverb

borderline (not comparable)

Nearly; not entirely but nevertheless to a great extent.
- He is borderline hypoglycemic and needs to monitor his sugar intake.
- I expected him to be super boring but he was actually borderline funny!

Noun

borderline (countable and uncountable, plural borderlines)

(countable) A boundary or accepted division; a border.
- She lives on the borderline between reality and madness.
- Elbow deep inside the borderline
  Show me that you love me and that we belong together
  Shoulder deep within the borderline
  Relax, turn around and take my hand1996, “Stinkfist”, performed by Tool
(countable) A person who has borderline personality disorder.
- As an example of their affective profile, borderlines are set apart from passive aggressives by having more marked social anxiety […] and greater sensitivity […]1995, Eugene E. Levitt, Edward Earl Gotts, The Clinical Application of MMPI Special Scales, page 80

Verb

borderline (third-person singular simple present borderlines, present participle borderlining, simple past and past participle borderlined)

(transitive) To border, or border on; to be physically close or conceptually akin to.

Also used as

borderline is also the ellipsis of borderline personality disorder.

borderline meaning in Hindi

borderline in Hindi

not clearly on one side or other of a boundary: सीमा रेखा sīmā rekhā

Examples of borderline in a sentence

Jackson got himself run in the top of the sixth for arguing a borderline strike three call.
The borderline between East and West Berlin was very closely guarded.
The government knows that the liberal broadsheet press is shot through with anti-Putin, borderline Russophobic prejudice.

All 27 example sentences with borderline

Forms of borderline

Adjective
comparative	more borderline
superlative	most borderline
alternative form	border-line
Noun
plural	borderlines
Verb
third-person singular present	borderlines
present participle	borderlining
past participle	borderlined
past	borderlined

Origin of borderline

From border + line.

Words formed from borderline

Phrases with borderline

Questions about borderline

What does borderline mean?: Borderline means nearly; not clearly on one side or the other of a border or boundary, ambiguous.
What is borderline in Hindi?: Borderline in Hindi is सीमा रेखा (sīmā rekhā). See Borderline meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is borderline?: Borderline can be an adjective, an adverb, a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce borderline?: Borderline is pronounced /ˈboɹ.dɚˌlaɪn/ (US).

Words near borderline in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: borderline (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-borderline.wav.

Cite this entry: “borderline.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/borderline. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.