Maginotn.
/ˈma(d)ʒᵻnəʊ/, U.S. /ˌmɑ(d)ʒiˈnoʊ/ Only in attributive use.
1. Maginot Line n. a line of fortifications along the frontier of France from Switzerland to Luxembourg, begun in the 1920s as a defence against German invasion and widely considered impregnable, but outflanked in 1940. Also more generally (denoting other similar lines of defence) and figurative.
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society > armed hostility > defence > defensive work(s) > [noun] > series of fortifications > specific series
Hindenburg Line1917
Siegfried Line1917
Maginot Line1936
Siegfried Line1938
Mannerheim Line1939
Atlantic Wall1944
1936 Times 30 Oct. 15/4 The Maginot Line. M. Daladier..inspected the recently completed frontier fortifications between Maubeuge and Valenciennes.
1937 A. Vagts Hist. Militarism xii. 457 The American coast is the Maginot Line of the United States.
1938 Nation (N.Y.) 23 July 78 Little Steel's Maginot Line against unionism.
1938 Nation (N.Y.) 23 July 83/2 Along the border the Czech Maginot Line is artfully concealed.
1947 C. S. Lewis Miracles xiv. 146 The belief that nothing but Nature exists and that if anything else did she is protected from it by a Maginot Line.
1962 Observer 1 July 7/1 There is also the danger that a national shelter programme could lead to a Maginot Line psychology.
1973 New Society 13 Sept. 632/2 The NGA has been attacked by the non-craft unions for having a ‘Maginot line mentality’.
1993 Globe & Mail (Toronto) 18 Oct. b8/6 Mr. Delors..likened some French politicians to the builders of the Maginot Line... ‘France is working itself into a psychodrama all by itself, inventing a Maginot Line.’
2. In extended use (in other ad hoc compounds), indicating a preoccupation with defence (of the status quo, etc.), or with a particular means of defence, as Maginot attitude, Maginot-complex; Maginot-minded adj.
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1940 Economist 13 July 37/1 The efficacy of blockade is a mirage, a delusion comparable to the Maginot-complex that bemused and enervated France.
1940 ‘Cato’ Guilty Men xxiv. 123 The maginot-minded French, wedded to the idea of ‘defensive ferro concrete’.
1942 Ann. Reg. 1941 79 People began to wonder whether the Government had not become ‘Maginot-minded’.
1962 Listener 24 May 893/1 Defence is only relevant to my present argument as evidence of the Maginot attitude of the old and Great Powers.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, March 2000; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1936