sunbelt
sunbelt noun: an area or belt of land that receives a lot of sun; specifically, a zone comprising the southern and western states of the USA where the weather is typically sunny, characterised by an influx of population from the north and often typified as having conservative political views.
Noun (1)
sunbelt (plural sunbelts)
- An area or belt of land that receives a lot of sun; specifically, a zone comprising the southern and western states of the USA where the weather is typically sunny, characterised by an influx of population from the north and often typified as having conservative political views.
- Anglos to whom I talked in Miami […] persisted in the related illusions that the city was small, manageable, prosperous in a predictable broad-based way, southern in a progressive sunbelt way, American, and belonged to them.1987, Joan Didion, Miami, Granta, published 2005, page 51
- Lack of water, fertile land, productive mines, and heavy industry made it an unlikely candidate. But the same forces which forged the new west and lured millions of people to the sunbelt, also boosted Las Vegas.1995, Eugene P. Moehring, Resort City in the Sunbelt: Las Vegas, 1930–1970, University of Nevada Press, →ISBN, page 13
Noun (2) capitalized: Sunbelt
Sunbelt (plural Sunbelts)
- Alternative letter-case form of sunbelt.
- After all, Richmond—the capital of Virginia—is much closer to New York City in terms of mileage than it is to Atlanta, Georgia, the city on the East Coast most widely considered to be quintessentially Sunbelt.2014, Sean P. Cunningham, American Politics in the Postwar Sunbelt […] , Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 7
Forms of sunbelt
| plural | sunbelts |
|---|---|
| alternative form | Sunbelt |
| alternative form | Sun Belt |
| plural | Sunbelts |
Origin of sunbelt
Compound of sun + belt. Purportedly coined by American politician Sam Rayburn.
Questions about sunbelt
- What does sunbelt mean?
- Sunbelt means an area or belt of land that receives a lot of sun; specifically, a zone comprising the southern and western states of the USA where the weather is typically sunny, characterised by an influx of population from the north and often typified as having conservative political views.
- What part of speech is sunbelt?
- Sunbelt is a noun.
- What is the plural of sunbelt?
- The plural of sunbelt is sunbelts.
Words near sunbelt in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: sunbelt (page history and authors); Sunbelt (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “sunbelt.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sunbelt. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.