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mason and dixon line

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Mason-Dixon line

  [mey-suhn-dik-suhn]
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–noun
the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland, partly surveyed by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon between 1763 and 1767, popularly considered before the end of slavery as a line of demarcation between free and slave states.
Also, Mason and Dixon line.

Origin:
1770–80, Americanism
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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Cultural Dictionary

Mason-Dixon line

Part of the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland established by the English surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon in the 1760s. The line resolved disputes caused by unclear description of the boundaries in the Maryland and Pennsylvania charters.

Note: Though the line did not actually divide North and South, it became the symbolic division between free states and slave states. Today, it still stands for the boundary between northern and southern states.
The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Word Origin & History

Mason-Dixon Line 
1779, named for Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, Eng. astronomers who surveyed (1763-7) the disputed boundary between the colonial holdings of the Penns and the Calverts. It became the technical boundary between "free" and "slave" states after 1804, when the last Northern state (New Jersey) passed its abolition act. As the line between "the North" and "the South" in U.S. culture, it is attested from 1834.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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