Word.ws English Dictionary

Medicine Line

Medicine Line proper noun: the Canada-United States border; the 49th parallel north: a circle of latitude that is 49° north of Earth's equator.

Proper noun

the Medicine Line

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

Origin of Medicine Line

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”).

Questions about Medicine Line

What does Medicine Line mean?
Medicine Line means the Canada-United States border; the 49th parallel north: a circle of latitude that is 49° north of Earth's equator.
What part of speech is Medicine Line?
Medicine Line is a proper noun.

Words near Medicine Line in the dictionary

  1. medicine chest
  2. medicine chests
  3. medicine dance
  4. medicine dances
  5. Medicine Hat
  6. Medicine Line
  7. medicine lodge
  8. medicine lodges
  9. medicine man
  10. medicine men
  11. medicine people

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Medicine Line (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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