no man's land
8
7.2
- noun
- /noʊ mænz lænd/
:
tierra de nadie
- They run into no man's land, they fight, and they die, for each other, not for a slap on the back or a medal on the chest.
- trenches of no man's land
- yards of no man's land
- edge of no man's land
Examples
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We're going to tunnel, under no man's land.
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Welcome to no-man's land.
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Finally he saw it: no-man's land was less than half a mile ahead.
Fiction book (2002) -
Hidden by the gas we will cross 200 metres of no man's land without being seen.
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A mist covered no-man's-land, and there was a feeling of rain clouds coming off the North Sea.
Fiction book (1994) -
After searching around a bit, I climbed over the parapet into no-man's-land.
Fiction book (1994) -
No-man's-land at the Somme was probably the best-fertilized area on the face of the globe.
Fiction book (1994) -
The air in no-man's-land is thick and cloying, quite unlike the sweat and cordite stink of the trenches.
Fiction book (1994) -
No-man's-land was a green carpet, vivid in the mist, which quickly swallowed the craters of exploding shells.
Fiction book (1994) -
In wartime, soldiers must often navigate the perilous no man's land between enemy trenches.
How Inhabited
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase literally combines 'no' + the possessive 'man's' + 'land' to mean land that belongs to no one; a B1 learner who knows these constituents can infer this literal meaning and thus understand its metaphorical extension to an ambiguous or unclaimed situation. The metaphorical sense (an area between defined positions) is a predictable figurative use found cross-linguistically (e.g., 'terra nullius', 'tierra de nadie'), so the expression is readily comprehensible from its parts.
Etymology
No man's land comes from battlefields. In World War I, the empty, dangerous ground between the opposing trenches belonged to no man, so soldiers called it no man's land, and that's why the phrase means 'an area that is unowned or between front lines'.