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This word comes straight from Latin. In the Roman empire, a terminus was a boundary stone, and all boundary stones had a minor god associated with them, whose name was Terminus. Terminus was a kind of keeper of the peace, since wherever there was a terminus there could be no arguments about where your property ended and your neighbor's property began. So Terminus even had his own festival, the Terminalia, when images of the god were draped with flower garlands. Today the word shows up in all kinds of places, including in the name of numerous hotels worldwide built near a city's railway terminus.
Examples of terminus in a Sentence
Jennifer Stewart Kornegay, Southern Living, 29 Mar. 2025
Hikers don’t face a similar issue at the Mexican border, because people can drive all the way to that terminus, near Campo, in San Diego County.
—Bay Area News Group, San Diego Union-Tribune, 24 Feb. 2025
The route stretches along South Boulevard to its southern I-485 terminus.
—Alexandria Sands, Axios, 3 Feb. 2025
The incident happened at 8 a.m. Monday at the Coney Island-Stillwell Ave. subway station in Coney Island, police said, the terminus station where a 57-year-old woman was set on fire and killed in December.
—Thomas Tracy, New York Daily News, 27 Mar. 2025
See All Example Sentences for terminus
Cite this Entry
“Terminus.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/terminus. Accessed 21 Apr. 2025.
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terminus
noun
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terminus
noun
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