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rust belt
noun
often capitalized R&B
: the northeastern and midwestern states of the U.S. in which heavy industry has declined
called also rust bowl
Examples of rust belt in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
Facing trouble among swathes of rust belt voters, the administration depends that much more on United Auto Workers boss Shawn Fain convincing his members a Biden White House can protect union jobs better than Donald Trump.
—Christiaan Hetzner, Fortune, 1 Mar. 2024
Now a lot of small towns like this in the rust belt are mostly empty, storefronts on Main Street are boarded up.
—Scott Roxborough, The Hollywood Reporter, 15 Feb. 2024
This free show, provided by the volunteers of the Cincinnati Cafe Racer Club, gives you a taste of what hard-working rust belt builders are crafting.
Details: noon-midnight Saturday, Rhinegeist Brewery, 1910 Elm St., Over-the-Rhine.
—Luann Gibbs, The Enquirer, 31 Jan. 2024
The show revolved around William Henry Deveraux Jr. (Odenkirk), the unlikely chair of the English department at Railton College, a badly underfunded school in the Pennsylvania rust belt.
—Lesley Goldberg, The Hollywood Reporter, 8 Dec. 2023
Nevertheless, in the rust belt of the North East, factories were already in decline and thefts were on the rise.
—Patrick Frater, Variety, 22 Oct. 2023
The northeastern province of Liaoning, part of China’s rust belt, saw more than twice as many deaths as births last year, with the population falling by 324,000, according to provincial authorities.
—Jessie Yeung, CNN, 23 Mar. 2023
China’s three northeastern provinces, regarded as its rust belt, helped kick-start China’s industrialization in the 1950s but were badly hit by the country’s shift to a market economy in the 1990s and now have some of the lowest birthrates in the nation.
—Keith Zhai, WSJ, 18 June 2021
Northeast Ohio steps in for the suburban college town of Blacksmith and its rust belt urban center Iron City during the 1980s.
—Joey Morona, cleveland, 29 Nov. 2022
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'rust belt.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
First Known Use
1982, in the meaning defined above
Dictionary Entries Near rust belt
Cite this Entry
“Rust belt.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rust%20belt. Accessed 18 Jun. 2024.
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