Word.ws English Dictionary

lower 48

lower 48 proper noun: the contiguous continental states area of the United States, comprising 48 states in number, and the District of Columbia, excluding Alaska and Hawaii.

Proper noun

the lower 48

  1. (US) The contiguous continental states area of the United States, comprising 48 states in number, and the District of Columbia, excluding Alaska and Hawaii.
    • Every month, the University of Michigan’s Survey Research Centre conducts a telephone poll of at least 500 households selected to be broadly representative of the Lower 48 states.2022 April 27, John Kemp, “Column: Global consumers balk at surging prices for durable goods”, in Mark Potter, editor, Reuters, archived from the original on 16 May 2022, Commodities

Synonyms of lower 48

Origin of lower 48

From lower + 48

Questions about lower 48

What does lower 48 mean?
Lower 48 means the contiguous continental states area of the United States, comprising 48 states in number, and the District of Columbia, excluding Alaska and Hawaii.
What part of speech is lower 48?
Lower 48 is a proper noun.

Words near lower 48 in the dictionary

  1. Lowenstein
  2. Lowensteins
  3. Lowenthal
  4. Lowenthals
  5. lower
  6. lower 48
  7. Lower Acacia Creek
  8. lower airway
  9. lower airways
  10. lower arm
  11. lower arms

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lower 48 (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.

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Cite this entry: “lower 48.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lower_48. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.