Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A line of fortification constructed in the 1930s along France's border with Germany. Thought to be impregnable, the line was bypassed and later captured by the Germans in 1940.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- proper noun A line of fortifications built before World War II to protect France's eastern border.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a fortification built before World War II to protect France's eastern border; initially considered to be impregnable, it was easily overrun by the German army in 1940
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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The Maginot Line was a line of concrete fortification, consisting of tank obstacles, artillery casemates, machine gun posts and other defence establishments, like a complex of bunkers.
The Times of India 2010
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This week the French press reported that as generals keep fighting the last war - that's why they built the Maginot Line - museums keep protecting against the last theft.
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By mid-May, however, the panzers had crossed the Meuse, demolishing the fortifications that extended the Maginot Line.
'Valley of Death' 2010
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Science, medicine, and engineering all have the same strategic flaw: construction of an intellectual Maginot Line.
Most intriguing and yet curiously disappointing headline of the day 2010
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After World War I, the French built the Maginot Line in eastern France to halt any future aggression of the Germans.
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Both had been secretly built to crush France's Maginot Line forts.
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Both had been secretly built to crush France's Maginot Line forts.
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In past weeks, though, global market forces circumvented this new Maginot Line without serious resistance, just as Germany did in 1940 with the original.
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But that had all changed – we'd finally got a national grip and now we were among the finest diners in Europe, while even French resistance to fast food was beginning to look like a cultural Maginot Line.
Whelk ice cream never meant we stopped being a Pot Noodle nation 2010
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Hitler knew this and simply marched around the Maginot Line and overran France.
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