Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • A former country of southeast Europe bordering on the Adriatic Sea. It was formed in 1918 as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and was renamed Yugoslavia in 1929. Under the leadership of Marshal Tito, the country became a Communist-led regime after World War II. After Tito's death in 1980, economic problems and ethnic tensions grew. Communist party control ended in 1990, and four of the six constituent republics (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia) declared independence in 1991. Serbia and Montenegro, the remaining states, abandoned the name Yugoslavia in 2003 and dissolved the federation entirely in 2006.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun Former country on the Balkan Peninsula. In addition to Serbia and Montenegro, Republic of Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, and Croatia were also part of the Yugoslav Federation prior to the 1990s.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a former country of southeastern Europe bordering the Adriatic Sea; formed in 1918 and named Yugoslavia in 1929; controlled by Marshal Tito as a communist state until his death in 1980
  • noun a mountainous republic in southeastern Europe bordering on the Adriatic Sea; formed from two of the six republics that made up Yugoslavia until 1992; Serbia and Montenegro were known as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia until 2003 when they adopted the name of the Union of Serbia and Montenegro

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Serbo-Croatian Jugoslavija, in turn from jugo (south) and slavija (slavia, the land of the Slavs). Literally, the land of the southern Slavs.

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