Deep South

American

noun

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

Deep South British

noun

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

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.

Publix has strong loyalty in the Deep South, she said, but it might struggle to break into the market.

From The Wall Street Journal

Determined to give her niece a stable upbringing, Aunt Irene unhappily but dutifully left a comfortable life in Ohio to return to her small-minded hometown in the Deep South.

From The Wall Street Journal

Fairbanks, who was Black and Seminole, was born in the Deep South at a time when ice rinks were segregated.

From Los Angeles Times

This is an urban school in a majority-black city, set in the postindustrial Deep South.

From The Wall Street Journal

“One of the reasons I decided to focus on Orange County is that it’s not the norm — not what you think of as the Deep South. It’s Disneyland. It’s California,” Lichtblau says.

From Los Angeles Times

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