Word.ws English Dictionary

nation-states

nation-states is the plural of nation-state.

Meaning of nation-state

Noun

nation-state (plural nation-states)

  1. A political entity (a state) associated with a common national identity (historically, culturally, or ethnically; as with a nation) and a sovereign territorial unit.
    • Two years on, and while the Sultan of Slowjamastan has instigated more than a few bizarre laws (he’s outlawed the wearing of Crocs, for example), the Republic also has all the trappings of a fledgling nation-state. It issues its own passports, flies its own flag, prints its own currency (“the...2023 June 8, Richard Collett, “He ran out of countries to visit, so he created his own”, in CNN
  2. (broadly, proscribed) Any independent political state; a country.

Phrases with nation-states

Questions about nation-states

What is nation-states the plural of?
Nation-states is the plural of nation-state.

Words near nation-states in the dictionary

  1. nation wreckers
  2. nation-builder
  3. nation-builders
  4. nation-building
  5. nation-state
  6. nation-states
  7. nation-wide
  8. nation-wrecker
  9. nation-wreckers
  10. national
  11. national academies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nation-states (page history and authors); nation-state (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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