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Glite Dictionary
Northwest Territories

Northwest Territories

1 5.4
A large area in northwest Canada now smaller since Canada created Nunavut in 1999
  • proper noun
translation icon : Territorios del Noroeste
  • The most commonly used (and perhaps accepted) view of TEK is by Martha Johnson, former executive director of the Dene Cultural Institute in the Northwest Territories.
  • Yukon and Northwest Territories
  • Northwest Territories, Canada

Examples

  • During this 5-year period, only 5 isolates of serotype 5 were detected from elsewhere in Canada: 1 from Ontario in March 2007, 1 from Quebec in June 2009, and 3 from Northwest Territories in April, July, and December 2007.

    Academic text (2012)

  • Along with the diamond project in the Northwest Territories, Canadians are developing the world's largest nickel mine along the Labrador coast.

  • The remaining provinces, Yukon and Northwest Territories, recorded losses.

    Academic text (1990)

  • A recent Supreme Court decision arose out of a long and bitter strike in the Northwest Territories at the Royal Oak Mines Company.

    Academic text (1996)

  • And he and his mom drove to two different post offices to find the postal code for Ulukhaktok in the Northwest Territories.

    Blog text (34)

  • This river is a classic canoeing river in one of the most remote areas in Canada, in the Northwest Territories, just east of the Yukon.

    Blog text (13)

  • Inuit have agreed to the land claim, so Ottawa has agreed to divide the Northwest Territories.

    The Last Ice (2020)

  • In the summer of 1995, my then-marriage partner Elizabeth Fajber and I visited the Dene community of Tulita (Fort Norman) in the western Arctic of Canada's Northwest Territories.

    Academic text (1997)

  • Yellowknife is the capital of Canada's Northwest Territories and the top global destination for aurora tourism.

  • The photograph at left was shot during the comet's perihelion on April 1st by Akira Fujii from Yellowknife in Canada's Northwest Territories.

Surface Forms

Northwest Territories main

Morphology

northwest + territory

The place name is directly compositional: 'northwest' (a direction/region) + 'territories' (lands governed) yields a geographic/political area in the northwest. This construction is common across languages for naming regions, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words would readily infer the MWE's meaning.

Etymology

Northwest Territories comes from a simple map idea: it named the lands in the northwest of early Canada, with territories meaning 'areas of land'. So the name means 'a large territory in northwestern Canada', and it used to be bigger before part became Nunavut in 1999.