Word.ws English Dictionary

Sotadic Zone

Sotadic Zone proper noun: a region of the world, approximately defined as a strip of Afroeurasia from the Mediterranean region eastward as well as the entirety of the Americas, in which male homosexuality was supposed to be societally prevalent.

Proper noun

the Sotadic Zone

  1. (historical) A region of the world, approximately defined as a strip of Afroeurasia from the Mediterranean region eastward as well as the entirety of the Americas, in which male homosexuality was supposed to be societally prevalent.
    • Within the Sotadic Zone the Vice is popular and endemic, held at the worst to be a mere peccadillo, whilst the races to the North and South of the limits here defined practice it only sporadically amid the opprobrium of their fellows who, as a rule, are physically incapable of performing the...1894, Richard Francis Burton, “Terminal Essay”, in The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, volume X, London: H.S. Nichols & Co.

Origin of Sotadic Zone

Coined by British explorer, army officer, writer and scholar Richard Francis Burton in 1886.

Questions about Sotadic Zone

What does Sotadic Zone mean?
Sotadic Zone means a region of the world, approximately defined as a strip of Afroeurasia from the Mediterranean region eastward as well as the entirety of the Americas, in which male homosexuality was supposed to be societally prevalent.
What part of speech is Sotadic Zone?
Sotadic Zone is a proper noun.

Words near Sotadic Zone in the dictionary

  1. sot
  2. sot-weed
  3. SOTA
  4. Sotadean
  5. sotadic
  6. Sotadic Zone
  7. Sotadics
  8. sotagliflozin
  9. sotah
  10. Sotak
  11. Sotaks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Sotadic Zone (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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