Deep South Definition & Meaning

American

British

Cultural

Examples

Deep South American

noun

1. the southeastern part of the U.S., including especially South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

Deep South British

noun

1. the SE part of the US, esp South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012 Deep South Cultural

1. The southernmost tier of states in the South: South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Before the Civil War, these states were centers of cotton production and slavery. All of them seceded from the United States before the firing on Fort Sumter. They are sometimes distinguished from the states of the Upper South (Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas), which contained proportionately fewer slaves prior to the Civil War and which seceded only after the firing on Fort Sumter.

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

After working his way up through the ranks at small schools around the Deep South, he spent five seasons as Alabama’s defensive coordinator from 2018 to 2022.

From The Wall Street Journal

Eli Whitney’s cotton gin expanded slavery across the Deep South.

From The Wall Street Journal

Since the 1890s the area’s coalfields had attracted Colored people from the Deep South as well as European immigrants who were searching for work.

From Literature

Within weeks he began traveling to civil-rights hot spots in the Deep South.

From The Wall Street Journal

“We were originally a rhythm and blues band, wearing blue suits and singing about people and problems in the Deep South,” Hayward recalled in an interview with The Times in 1990.

From Los Angeles Times

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.