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No man's land   /noʊ mænz lænd/   Listen
No man's land

noun
1.
An unoccupied area between the front lines of opposing armies.
2.
Land that is unowned and uninhabited (and usually undesirable).
3.
The ambiguous region between two categories or states or conditions (usually containing some features of both).  Synonym: twilight zone.  "In the twilight zone between humor and vulgarity" , "In that no man's land between negotiation and aggression"






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"No man's land" Quotes from Famous Books



... were very far from appreciating America's decision at its full value. For a year we had had the upper-hand of the Hun. To use the language of the trenches, we knew that we could go across No Man's Land and "beat him up" any time we liked. To tell the truth, many of us felt a little jealous that when, after two years of punishment, we had at last become top-dog, we should be called upon to share the glory of victory with soldiers of the eleventh hour. We believed that we were ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson

... a "No Man's Land," it was the space between the two armies which had aptly been called the "Plain of Death." Any one who ventured upon it thought very little of this life, and it was well that he should, as he had little of it left to think ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... No Man's Land there came a sort o' greenish yellow cloud. No man there knew what it meant. There was a hissing and a writhing, as of snakes, and like a snake the gas came toward them. It reached them, and men began to cough and choke. And other men fell doon, and their ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder

... engagements across No Man's Land between the mingled French, British and French forces and the Huns, and honors were on the side of the former. There had been one or two combats in the air, in which Tom and Jack had taken part, when one day word came from an observation balloon ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach

... other on high ground overlooking an almost flat plain through which the wadi Ghuzze runs. All the observation was in enemy possession, and to attack over this ground would have been inviting disaster. There was little fear that the Turks would attack us across this wide range of No Man's Land, for we held secure control of the curiously shaped heaps of broken earth about Shellal, and the conical hill at Fara gave an uninterrupted view for several miles northward and eastward. The position was very different about Beersheba. If we ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey

... of No Man's Land, because, though many tribes of Indians roamed over it, none of them pretended to own it. These bands of Indians were always fighting and trying to drive each other out, so Kentucky was often called the "Dark and ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery

... creeping on their prey crawled steadily, silently forward into the abysmally black unknown. Slower and more uncertain they moved, feeling their way; and at midnight came to a final stop at the near approaches to No Man's Land. Quickly we detrained and took cover in a near-by forest; the empty cars trailed off rapidly to the south; and dawn found neither a car nor a soldier in sight. All that day we remained hidden in the shadowy solitudes of Bois l'Evque on the ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy

... sort of country just there, with sometimes a mile of half burned trees, whether done for a purpose or by accident it would be difficult to say. At any rate, no one seemed to care. It all had the look of No Man's Land,—unreclaimed and unreclaimable. ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... Captain Hardy. Willie made a wry face. The captain saw him. "The trench raiders blacken both their hands and faces when they steal out into No Man's Land at night," he said. "But we won't use real paint, Willie. We'll get some theatrical paint that comes off easily. I'll get the necessary materials ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss

... result it can easily be imagined that any patrol or reconnoitering work between the lines was apt to be exceedingly unhealthy. Actually there were parts on the line where no feet had pressed the ground of No Man's Land for weeks on end, unless in open attack or counter-attack, and of these feet there were a good many that never returned to the trench, and a good many others that did return only to walk straight to ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)

... slacker myself—if there is any such animal. But what under heaven has all this to do with our relation as employer and employee in the Mill? What effect would Mary have had on you over there if she had gone to you with 'Oh, Charlie dear, you mustn't go out in that dreadful No Man's Land to-night. It is so dirty and wet and cold. Remember that you are an officer, Charlie dear, and let Private ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright

... fifteen minutes as could be conceived. The No Man's Land between the trenches was heaped with men tangled and twisted in death or writhing with wounds which unmercifully let them live. Neither side dared venture across to aid these sufferers, so they were left in ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various

... Bank, Latrun Salient, and the northwest quarter of the Dead Sea, but excludes Mt. Scopus; East Jerusalem and Jerusalem No Man's Land are also included only as a means of depicting the entire area occupied by ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... Germans giving the village of Paissy (Aisne) a taste of the "Jack Johnsons." The spot thus honored is not far from the ridge where there has been some of the most severe close fighting in which we have taken part. All over this No Man's Land, between the lines, bodies of German infantrymen were still lying in heaps where they had fallen at ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various

... down to the men in the mine-shafts underneath. The moles were there—the moles who scratched and scraped stolidly, at the end of their gallery thirty or forty yards in front, deep down under the earth in No Man's Land. ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... characteristic feature of animality. Is this a plant; or is it an animal? Is it both; or is it neither? Some decide in favour of the last supposition, and establish an intermediate kingdom, a sort of biological No Man's Land [100] for all these questionable forms. But, as it is admittedly impossible to draw any distinct boundary line between this no man's land and the vegetable world on the one hand, or the animal, on the other, it appears to me that this proceeding merely doubles ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... was sitting on a grocery box in No Man's Land, laughing so hard that his sides ached. Their banter seemed a kind of tonic to him. And it was when he laughed and seemed so simple and childlike and so much one of them, that they found ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... wind lifted the sand he could follow to that hidden nest of the Hawk. It was very dark now except for glimmer of stars through lacy, slow-drifting clouds,—there was no wind. Later there would be a waning moon! Much of every waking life is a dream, and her dreams were of the No Man's Land of the desert,—the waterless trail from which she ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan

... are those who are hurt, not in the trenches but in front of them. In that narrow strip of No Man's Land between the confronting armies, and extending four hundred and fifty miles from the sea through Belgium and France, each day uncounted numbers of men fall, and, falling, must lie. The terrible thirst that follows loss of blood makes them faint; the cold winds and snows and rains of what has ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... been posted at one of the loop-holes as a listening sentry, looked out to see what lay in front of him. But the most that could be seen were the long and winding earth embankments that marked the lines of the German entrenchments, and between, on "no man's land," a maze of barbed wire entanglements. No living human being was in sight, but, at one place, crumpled up, partly sustained by meshes of wire, there was a ragged heap, the sight of which sent a chill to the boy's heart. It required no second glance to discover that this was the unrescued ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene

... tell of Castro's futile attempt to get north of the bay. Since Cabrillo was foiled in landing at Mendocino in 1543, the first royal flag floating over this "No Man's Land" was Good Queen Bess's standard, set up in 1579 by dashing Sir Francis Drake. He landed from the Golden Hind. In 1602 the Spanish ensign floated on December 10 at Monterey; in 1822 the third national ensign was unfurled, the beloved Mexican eagle-bearing ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... Their pasture is in no man's land. Their food the cattle's scorn, Their rest is mire and their desire The thicket ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling

... fervently. "Horrid shame to waste it all on a handful of politicals up in No Man's Land instead of exhibiting it at Government House. You wear this fallal ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... star shell rose and exploded, casting a greenish radiance over the barren stretch of No Man's Land that separated ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall

... we were masters—namely, patrolling. At Armentieres we had had no practice in this art, and our first venture into No Man's Land was consequently a distinctly hazardous enterprise for those who undertook it—2nd Lieut. J.W. Tomson, Corpl. Staniforth, Ptes. Biddles, Tebbutt, and Tailby, all of "A" Company (Toller). Their second night in the line, in 15 trench, this little party ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills

... soothingly. And to me he added in a murmured whisper, "He's afraid. He was blown up in a mine in No Man's Land between the trenches at Christmas-time in 1914. It broke ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock

... indeed, till within a short period of retiring from the field, no centre forward of his day, and very few since, have equalled M'Kinnon in that trying position. When the 3rd Lanark Rifle Volunteers started the dribbling game on the old drill ground at Govanhill, or rather when that small burgh was "No Man's Land," M'Kinnon was one of its most active players. It is in connection with his membership of the Queen's Park that I wish to recall incidents in his career. In 1874 I made my way over to the South-Side Park to witness a match between the Queen's ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone

... canneries tested themselves, but on the opening day of the new month the horde issued boldly forth from the depths of the sea, and the battle began in earnest. They came during the hush of the dawn, a mad, crowding throng from No Man's Land, to wake the tide-rips and people the shimmering reaches of the bay, lashing them to sudden life and fury. Outside, the languorous ocean heaved as smiling and serene as ever, but within the harbor ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... shamefacedly deprecating the desire to lionize him, "there wasn't much credit in what I did. I'm even sorry I did it, for my foolishness sent me to the hospital an' put me out o' the war. But there was Tom McChesney, lyin' out there in No Man's Land, with a bullet in his chest an' moanin' for water. Tom was a good chum o' mine, an' I was mad when I saw him fall—jest as the Boches was drivin' us back to our trenches. I know'd the poor cuss was in misery, an' I know'd what I'd expect a chum o' mine to do if I was in Tom's place. So out ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)



Words linked to "No man's land" :   area, ambiguity, twilight zone, equivocalness, land, country



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