Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
Guantanamo Bay

Guantanamo Bay

5 5.2
A bay in the southeast of Cuba with a US naval base
  • proper noun
  • /ɡwɑːnˈtɑːnəmoʊ beɪ/
translation icon : Bahía de Guantánamo
  • Seated at a table in the West Wing in front of a phalanx of retired military officers, Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay and "restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that made this country great even in the midst of war."
  • Guantanamo Bay detention
  • naval base at Guantanamo Bay
  • Guantanamo Bay prison

Examples

  • According to one, Guantanamo Bay detention camp was to be closed within a year.

  • Hicks told his family in a 2004 visit to Guantanamo Bay that he had been anally assaulted during interrogation by the U.S. in Afghanistan while he was hooded and restrained.

    Blog text (28)

  • What if they both support confining foreigners and untried individuals in Guantanamo Bay?

    Blog text (8)

  • Each time a person is released from Guantanamo Bay, the details emerge, and rational people are wondering why that person in particular was singled out for such treatment.

    Blog text (28)

  • Obama's first significant act as president—beyond that futile gesture with Guantanamo Bay—was to push Congress to pass the $800 billion stimulus bill.

    Blog text (28)

  • The U.S. holds 40 men at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

  • The flight took off Friday from Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with 136 passengers and seven crew members.

Surface Forms

Guantanamo Bay main

Morphology

Guantanamo + bay

The compound is a straightforward place-name composed of a proper noun (Guantanamo) and a geographic term (bay), so a learner who knows both words will infer it denotes a coastal inlet at/near Guantanamo. Place-name formations of this type are cross-linguistically common, making the basic locational meaning immediately transparent even if specific political or historical associations (e.g. the naval base or prison) are not known.

Etymology

Guantanamo Bay is the name of a town and a piece of sea called a bay in southeastern Cuba. When the United States set up a 'naval base' there in 1903 and later opened a 'detention center' at the base, the place name came to stand for that prison as well.