stateling

plural statelings

1. derogatorysometimesuncommonA statelet; a very small nation-state, or a region that acts like a nation-state.First known use 19th

   […]Following the lead / Of some sly stateling, one by one depart / The muster'd conclave, till the bounds are broke / In order unimpeached. […]

   1855 December 29, Jacques Delille, “The Ingle-Nook”, in The Dublin University Magazine, volume XLVI, number CCLXXVI, page 641

   5 more examples

   With the exception of France, whom the Americans would, perhaps, challenge for seeming now to prejudge the case against them, and Spain jealous for Cuba and Porto Rico, there is scarcely a State or Stateling in European Christendom, from Russia down to the Free Towns of Hamburg, Lubeck, or Bremen, or the Canton of Geneva, which might not be safely accepted as arbiter.

   1861 December 21, “The Case of Trent. Letter III. Extra-legal Aspects of the Difficulty”, in The Spectator, volume 34, number 1747, page 1396

   […] having driven out of existence the old-time private academy, once the boast of every New England village, have reared up a pedagogic caste of stateling schoolteachers whose wooden adhesion to artificial traditions has bred a race of New England men and women as little to be compared in real intelligence with their fathers and mothers as they are in sincere religion.

   1888 April 29, “The Suppression of Private Schools”, in The Catholic World, volume XLVII, number 277, page 137

   Nor could she be delighted by the fact that Koweit, that ticklish Arab stateling at the head of the Gulf, was named as the terminus of the line,[…]

   1916 April 29, H. G. Dwight, “The Campaign in Western Asia”, in The Yale Review, volume 5, number 3, page 515

   And wherever a vernacular could be found that was at all different from Russian its nationalist followers were enrolled and the new stateling was told to be permanent.

   1925 February 28, S. C. Gilfillan, “European Political Boundaries”, in The Historical Outlook, volume 16, number 2, page 70

   The guns were booming in measured intervals. Every spectator and every signer found voice; cheer after cheer bade the infant stateling welcome and a long life. ...

   1934, Julian Dana, “The Breeze-Whipped Sails” (chapter XLII), in Sutter of California: A Biography, The Press of Pioneers Inc., page 349