as in marginal
located at or near a border
a frontier town with a reputation for vice and lawlessness
Synonyms & Similar Words
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
1
as in border
a region along the dividing line between two countries
the Apaches were once feared on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico frontier
Synonyms & Similar Words
2
as in countryside
a rural region that forms the edge of the settled or developed part of a country
Alaska has been called America's last frontier
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of frontier
Charlie Campbell, Time, 11 Dec. 2025
Dylan Butts, CNBC, 20 May 2026
Training a frontier model can require tens of thousands of these processors running for weeks or months.
—Deni Ellis Béchard, Scientific American, 1 May 2026
See All Example Sentences for frontier
Adjective
That worried Huang, who fears a Chinese rival, and White House officials, who believe Chinese dependence on non-frontier American chips is the best way to ensure a lead in AI.
—Charlie Campbell, Time, 11 Dec. 2025
Noun
The new lab is expected to employ more than 200 people over the next few years, aiming to help its local partners harness frontier AI to enhance everyday economic capability.
—Dylan Butts, CNBC, 20 May 2026
Training a frontier model can require tens of thousands of these processors running for weeks or months.
—Deni Ellis Béchard, Scientific American, 1 May 2026
See All Example Sentences for frontier
Recent Examples of Synonyms for frontier
Adjective
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In that setting, the marginal value of additional internal data begins to decline, while the value of an external perspective increases.—
Henrik Totterman,
Forbes.com,
24 May 2026
-
At some point, the bracket creep is going to overreach into the point of diminishing marginal returns — dulling regular seasons and perhaps ultimately even eventually interest in the postseasons.—
Kansas City Star,
Kansas City Star,
24 May 2026
Noun
-
Tucked in the northeastern part of Congo close to the Ugandan border, Ituri province has been reeling from attacks by the Allied Democratic Force, a rebel group allied with the Islamic State group, and a coalition of ethnic militias.—
ABC News,
ABC News,
28 May 2026
-
The programs on opposite sides of the Missouri-Kansas border will play the neutral-site game at T-Mobile Center.—
Killian Wright,
Kansas City Star,
28 May 2026
Noun
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Days quickly merge into one another, interspersed with dips in the large pool—or aperitivo beside it; bike rides through the adjacent countryside; road trips to the beach; visits to nearby villages, including Margarites, which is famous for its ceramic making.—
Katie Silcox,
Vogue,
28 May 2026
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Hafsia Herzi plays Nora, a successful government worker living in a beautiful house in a marshy stretch of French countryside, with a dependable husband, an annoying daughter, and Monica Bellucci for a neighbor.—
Justin Chang,
New Yorker,
27 May 2026
Noun
-
Trump has effectively imposed a fuel blockade on the island by threatening tariffs on countries supplying it with fuel, igniting seemingly endless power outages and delivering new blows to the island's already ailing economy.—
Phil Stewart,
USA Today,
30 May 2026
-
The journey to this point began almost a century ago and hundreds of miles away in China, when Mao Zedong reshaped Marxist–Leninist theory to fit the pre-industrial conditions of his country.—
Dhruv Tikekar,
CNN Money,
30 May 2026
Noun
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Even the foundations of today’s artificial intelligence boom were laid by the NSF in the 1980s and 1990s, when neural networks were a backwater dismissed by mainstream computer science.—
Gautam Mukunda,
Twin Cities,
14 May 2026
-
For decades, seabed cartography was a scientific backwater.—
Natalie Sum Yue Chung,
Fortune,
3 May 2026
Noun
-
The film eliminated even a gesture toward a plot while showing solitary nonprofessional and real-life ranch-hand Misael Saavedra chopping and hauling logs in the Argentinian hinterlands (in actuality, Alonso’s family’s ranch).—
Vadim Rizov,
IndieWire,
16 May 2026
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Together, all of those developments deepened class and regional inequalities, as capital flowed away from workers in the industrial hinterland toward financial centers like New York.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
15 May 2026
Noun
-
Since 1971, Robert Hansen, an unassuming 44-year-old Anchorage bakery owner and married father of two, had been abducting dancers and prostitutes, flying them to the backcountry on his Piper Super Cub plane and then releasing them and—armed with a gun and hunting knife—stalking them like wild prey.—
Johnny Dodd,
PEOPLE,
22 May 2026
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LifeStraw’s redesigned Peak Series Straw features a durable, leakproof design that’s great for backcountry treks.—
Sheena Vasani,
The Verge,
22 May 2026
Noun
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Located just outside the center of town, the property sits on the edge of a hillside, overlooking the surrounding bush, and there’s a busy waterhole that regularly attracts elephant, buffalo, warthog and kudu.—
Sarah Kingdom,
Forbes.com,
23 May 2026
-
There looks like small Spanish moss sprouting on one of our bushes.—
Tom MacCubbin,
The Orlando Sentinel,
23 May 2026
Cite this Entry
“Frontier.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/frontier. Accessed 30 May. 2026.
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