Borduria
Language: English
Part of speech: name
Etymology: From French Bordurie, from bordure (“border”). Coined by Hergé in 1939 for King Ottokar's Sceptre.
Senses: examples: text: Graustark, Ruritania, Borduria, Syldavia and a score of imaginary kingdoms, usurped by tyrants and sundered by fights for the throne, leap into mind: plots, treachery, imprisoned heirs and palace factions abound and, along with them, fiendish monocled swordsmen, queens in lonely towers, toppling ranges, deep forests, plains full of half-wild horses, wandering tribes of Gypsies who steal children out of castles and dye them...
ref: 1977, Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts, 1st edition, New York Review Books, →ISBN, archived from the original on 13 Nov 2022:
text: The play will be set in Borduria, the fictional state originally created in Hergé's Tintin that resembles a 1970s eastern European state.
ref: 2014 June 19, Hannah Ellis-Petersen, “Decaying east London tower block to house 12-hour Macbeth production”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 19 May 2022:
text: He made up two fictional countries, Borduria and Syldavia, and the struggles between the two were actually a satire on the expansionist policies of Nazi Germany.
ref: 2017 May 22, Utkarsh Srivastava, “A Tintin Mystery: Why Hergé's comics continue to fascinate, 88 years after their debut”, in Firstpost, archived from the original on 29 Jan 2022:
text: Hardly any of the cars in the Tintin comics are exotic, while a few of them — like the stretch black limousine driven in a convoy in Tapiocapolis in the final, complete adventure Tintin and the Picaros and the open-topped roadster used to rescue Professor Calculus from the prison fortress of Bakhine in Borduria — are an imaginary combination of real cars.
ref: 2022 September 3, Srinivas Krishnan, “The automotive adventures of Tintin”, in Mumbai Mirror, archived from the original on 10 Nov 2022:
text: Borduria and Syldavia, both fictional Balkan countries appearing in the Adventures of Tintin graphic novel, also merit a mention as places used to highlight the stereotypes about the southeastern parts of the continent.
ref: 2022 November 4, Aleksandar Brezar, “What is Listenbourg? Why is it going viral on Twitter? Why did the meme become so big in Europe?”, in Euronews, archived from the original on 07 Nov 2022:
text: The reporter’s future adventures took him far and wide - even to outer space - and to a handful of fictionalised countries including Balkan states Borduria and Syldavia and the South American countries of San Theodoros, São Rico and Nuevo Rico.
ref: 2017 7, The Newsroom, “When Tintin the intrepid fictional reporter came to Scotland”, in The Scotsman (Journal), archived from the original on 10 Nov 2022:
text: But the name of Grand Fenwick doesn't occur in any history book, or show up in any atlas, unless it also maps Ruritania, Syldavia, Borduria, Oz or even Shangri-La.
ref: 2016 September 18, Vikas Datta, “The small nation which beat the superpowers, global capitalism”, in The News Minute, archived from the original on 13 Nov 2022:
topics: fiction
literature
media
publishing
glosses: An imaginary country located in the Balkans and enemy of Syldavia, in the comic book series The Adventures of Tintin.
examples: text: Is Syldavia a more unequal society than Borduria? For an inequality comparison to be meaningful, then the answer "yes, Syldavia is more unequal than Borduria" must also imply, in the other direction, "Borduria is less unequal than Syldavia."
ref: 2000, Yoram Amiel, chapter 2, in Thinking about Inequality: Personal Judgment and Income Distributions, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, archived from the original on 10 Nov 2022, page 9:
text: Under these conditions, the prices in Borduria and Syldavia are 19 and 35 $/MWh, respectively. The value of transporting one additional megawatt-hour from Borduria to Syldavia is thus only 16 $/MWh. This is also the maximum price that consumers in Syldavia would agree to pay for the transport of a megawatt-hour that they have bought in Borduria for 19 $/MWh.
ref: 2004, Daniel S. Kirschen and Goran Strbac, chapter 8, in Fundamentals of Power System Economics, 1st edition, Wiley, →ISBN, archived from the original on 10 Nov 2022, page 278:
text: Consider two sets of death rates by age for two imaginary countries, Syldavia (S) and Borduria (B), as in Figure 15-1.
ref: 2006, chapter 15, in Graziella Caselli, Jacques Vallin, Guillaume Wunsch, editors, Demography: Analysis and Synthesis, Four Volume Set: A Treatise in Population, 1st edition, Academic Press, →ISBN, archived from the original on 13 Nov 2022, pages 201–202:
text: Demand for mangoes is such that this can be expected to double the per capita income in Borduria. Syldavia offers the metal to Borduria, but offers it only in exchange for Borduria signing a treaty for mutual defense.
ref: 2013, Michael Blake, chapter 5, in Justice and Foreign Policy, 1st edition, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, archived from the original on 11 Nov 2022, page 121:
text: On the contrary, Borduria is one of the largest sovereign States in the world in terms of territorial size, but not densely populated. Bordurians are mainly Hindus and their economy is based on agriculture.
ref: 2017, Jorge E. Núñez, chapter 6, in Sovereignty Conflicts and International Law and Politics: A Distributive Justice Issue (Routledge Research in International Law), 1st edition, Routledge, →ISBN, archived from the original on 10 Nov 2022, page 134:
text: Imagine, for instance, that all states in the world - Borduria and Syldavia are the only ones, perhaps - are flourishing, and exceed whatever line of political adequacy you think makes legitimate. Borduria and Syldavia, in short, are both doing fine.
ref: 2019, Michael Blake, Justice, Migration, and Mercy, Oxford University Press edition, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, archived from the original on 11 Nov 2022, page 55:
glosses: A generic name of a fictional country, generally contrasted with a rival counterpart Syldavia.