terra nullius
/ˈtɛɹə nʌˈlaɪ.əs/
terra nullius noun: empty land; land not legally belonging to anyone; no man's land.
Noun
terra nullius (countable and uncountable, plural terrae nullius)
- Empty land; land not legally belonging to anyone; no man's land.
- When Aboriginal people showed up which they inevitably did they had to be subjected, incarcerated or eradicated: to keep the myth of terra nullius alive.1993, Patrick Dodson, ‘Welcome Speech to Conference on the Position of Indigenous People in National Constitutions’, in Heiss & Minter, Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature, Allen & Unwin...
- Following the breakup of former Yugoslavia in 1991, seven new states emerged in the region with many border disputes that left some territories as terrae nullius, or no-man’s lands.2015 May 24, “Kingdom of Enclava: new micro-nation settles for spot on Croat-Serb border”, in The Guardian, sourced from Agence France-Presse, archived from the original on 22 Nov 2021
Forms of terra nullius
| plural | terrae nullius |
|---|
Origin of terra nullius
Borrowed from Latin terra nūllīus (“nobody's land”).
Questions about terra nullius
- What does terra nullius mean?
- Terra nullius means empty land; land not legally belonging to anyone; no man's land.
- What part of speech is terra nullius?
- Terra nullius is a noun.
- How do you pronounce terra nullius?
- Terra nullius is pronounced /ˈtɛɹə nʌˈlaɪ.əs/.
- What is the plural of terra nullius?
- The plural of terra nullius is terrae nullius.
Words near terra nullius in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: terra nullius (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: “terra nullius.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/terra_nullius. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.