Word.ws English Dictionary

states' rights

states' rights noun: rights reserved to the 50 state governments of the United States that allow each one to set policy on some issues, rather than being subject to federal policy, especially in reference to their right to allow slavery before the Civil War.

Noun

states' rights pl (plural only)

  1. (US, plural, plural-only, conservatism) Rights reserved to the 50 state governments of the United States that allow each one to set policy on some issues, rather than being subject to federal policy, especially in reference to their right to allow slavery before the Civil War.

Words formed from states' rights

Questions about states' rights

What does states' rights mean?
States' rights means rights reserved to the 50 state governments of the United States that allow each one to set policy on some issues, rather than being subject to federal policy, especially in reference to their right to allow slavery before the Civil War.
What part of speech is states' rights?
States' rights is a noun.

Words near states' rights in the dictionary

  1. states the obvious
  2. states within a state
  3. states within states
  4. states' righter
  5. states' righters
  6. states' rights
  7. Statesboro
  8. statescraft
  9. statescrafts
  10. stateship
  11. stateships

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: states' rights (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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