borderline.
Nearly; not clearly on one side or the other of a border or boundary, ambiguous.
Meaning & usage
Nearly; not clearly on one side or the other of a border or boundary, ambiguous.
I would rather hire a talented layman than a university graduate with borderline qualifications.
Of questionable taste or acceptability; approaching bad taste.
Your borderline remarks about my aunt’s dress destroyed my evening.
Exhibiting or characteristic of borderline personality disorder.
Where this word comes from
From border + line.
Nearly; not entirely but nevertheless to a great extent.
He is borderline hypoglycemic and needs to monitor his sugar intake.
I expected him to be super boring but he was actually borderline funny!
Where this word comes from
From border + line.
A boundary or accepted division; a border.
She lives on the borderline between reality and madness.
Ellipsis of borderline personality disorder.
A person who has borderline personality disorder.
Where this word comes from
From border + line.
To border, or border on; to be physically close or conceptually akin to.
Where this word comes from
From border + line.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.