stateling

English

Etymology

From state +‎ -ling.

Noun

stateling (plural statelings)

(uncommon, sometimes derogatory) A statelet; a very small nation-state, or a region that acts like a nation-state. [from 19th]
- 1855 December, Jacques Delille, “The Ingle-Nook”, in The Dublin University Magazine, volume XLVI, number CCLXXVI, page 641:
  […] Following the lead / Of some sly stateling, one by one depart / The muster'd conclave, till the bounds are broke / In order unimpeached. […]
- 1861 December 21, “The Case of Trent. Letter III. Extra-legal Aspects of the Difficulty”, in The Spectator, volume 34, number 1747, page 1396:
  With the exception of France, whom the Americans would, perhaps, challenge for seeming now to prejudge the case against them, and Spain jealous for Cuba and Porto Rico, there is scarcely a State or Stateling in European Christendom, from Russia down to the Free Towns of Hamburg, Lubeck, or Bremen, or the Canton of Geneva, which might not be safely accepted as arbiter.
- 1888 April, “The Suppression of Private Schools”, in The Catholic World, volume XLVII, number 277, page 137:
  […] having driven out of existence the old-time private academy, once the boast of every New England village, have reared up a pedagogic caste of stateling schoolteachers whose wooden adhesion to artificial traditions has bred a race of New England men and women as little to be compared in real intelligence with their fathers and mothers as they are in sincere religion.
- 1916 April, H. G. Dwight, “The Campaign in Western Asia”, in The Yale Review, volume 5, number 3, page 515:
  Nor could she be delighted by the fact that Koweit, that ticklish Arab stateling at the head of the Gulf, was named as the terminus of the line, […]
- 1925 February, S. C. Gilfillan, “European Political Boundaries”, in The Historical Outlook, volume 16, number 2, page 70:
  And wherever a vernacular could be found that was at all different from Russian its nationalist followers were enrolled and the new stateling was told to be permanent.
- 1934, Julian Dana, “The Breeze-Whipped Sails” (chapter XLII), in Sutter of California: A Biography, The Press of Pioneers Inc., page 349:
  The guns were booming in measured intervals. Every spectator and every signer found voice; cheer after cheer bade the infant stateling welcome and a long life. ...