Word.ws English Dictionary

nine-dash line

nine-dash line proper noun: a set of line segments on various maps that have accompanied the claims of the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China to various contested areas in the South China Sea.

nine-dash line: a set of line segments on various maps that have accompanied the claims of the People's Republic of...
Image: U.S. Department of Defense, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Proper noun

the nine-dash line

  1. A set of line segments on various maps that have accompanied the claims of the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China to various contested areas in the South China Sea.
    • Hollywood certainly has a cynical heart: Barbie was banned this week from opening in Vietnam for including on a map the “nine-dash line” that China uses to claim sovereignty over territory in the South China Sea.2023 July 8, John Gapper, “Barbie is a brand that keeps changing with the times”, in FT Weekend, London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 9
    Synonyms:
    ten-dash line, eleven-dash line

nine-dash line meaning in Vietnamese

nine-dash line in Vietnamese

set of line segments on various maps
đường chín đoạn, đường lưỡi bò, đường chữ U, đường chín khúc

Synonyms of nine-dash line

  • ten-dash line
  • eleven-dash line

Origin of nine-dash line

Calque of Chinese 九段線 /九段线 (Jiǔduànxiàn).

Questions about nine-dash line

What does nine-dash line mean?
Nine-dash line means a set of line segments on various maps that have accompanied the claims of the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China to various contested areas in the South China Sea.
What is nine-dash line in Vietnamese?
Nine-dash line in Vietnamese is đường chín đoạn, đường lưỡi bò, đường chữ U. See Nine-dash line meaning in Vietnamese.
What part of speech is nine-dash line?
Nine-dash line is a proper noun.

Words near nine-dash line in the dictionary

  1. nine-ball
  2. nine-banded armadillo
  3. nine-banded armadillos
  4. nine-darter
  5. nine-darters
  6. nine-dash line
  7. nine-day wonder
  8. nine-day wonders
  9. nine-eyes
  10. nine-hundredth
  11. nine-killer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nine-dash 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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Cite this entry: “nine-dash line.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nine-dash_line. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.