West Germany

English

Etymology

From informal use describing the British-, French-, and American-occupied zones of Germany following World War II, under influence from existing German Westdeutschland and Westdeutscher used to describe those areas of German-speaking Europe since the 17th and 18th centuries.[1]

Pronunciation

  • Audio (Southern England):(file)

Proper noun

West Germany

  2. (historical, 1949–1990) A former country in Central Europe, distinguished from the German Democratic Republic, commonly known as East Germany. Official name: Federal Republic of Germany.
    • 2012 September 6, Bryony Jones, “Why is unity so important to Europe?”, in CNN‎[1]:
      The ECSC, which was made up of six nations (France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) later evolved into the European Economic Community (EEC) – under which the member states established a common market, and worked to harmonize their policies on everything from agriculture and fisheries to monetary policy.
  4. (since 1990) A geographic region of Germany, consisting of the states formerly part of the Cold War-era West Germany, also known as Western Germany.
  5. (historical, uncommon, 1945–1949) Collectively, the British-, French-, and American-occupied zones of Germany, distinguished from the Soviet-occupied zone.

Synonyms

Translations

References

  1. ^ Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed. "West German, adj. and n." Oxford University Press (Oxford), 2012.
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.