neutral ground

Related to neutral ground: Neutral current

neutral ground

n. Louisiana & Southern Mississippi

2. The grass strip, often planted with shade trees, between a sidewalk and a street.

Word History: The term neutral ground originates in the 1800s in New Orleans, when Anglophone Americans first took up residence in the city among the original inhabitants of Creole heritage. At the time, there was an empty strip of land that was supposed to become a drainage canal. The newcomers built their houses on the upriver side of the strip, while the Creoles continued to build on the downriver side, in the area that would eventually become known as the French Quarter. There were frequent disputes between the two groups, but the strip of land between them was considered neutral ground. The canal itself was never built, and the strip eventually became the wide boulevard called Canal Street, with a big median strip down the middle. Neutral ground then came to be applied to any such median strip.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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He had reached the neutral ground upon the outskirts of the town, which was neither town nor country, and yet was either spoiled, when his ears were invaded by the sound of music.

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The Vannis' tent brought the town boys and the country girls together on neutral ground. Sylvester Lovett, who was cashier in his father's bank, always found his way to the tent on Saturday night.

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It was necessary to find some neutral ground on which an exchange could be made, and then to try and land these goods on the coast of France.

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A man may be very sober--or at least firmly set upon his legs on that neutral ground which lies between the confines of perfect sobriety and slight tipsiness--and yet feel a strong tendency to mingle up present circumstances with others which have no manner of connection with them; to confound all consideration of persons, things, times, and places; and to jumble his disjointed thoughts together in a kind of mental kaleidoscope, producing combinations as unexpected as they are transitory.

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There was again a pause, and Sir Nathaniel endeavoured to get back to less emotional and more neutral ground.

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A few hundred yards of this flat ground at its base belongs to the English, and then, extending across the strip from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, a distance of a quarter of a mile, comes the "Neutral Ground," a space two or three hundred yards wide, which is free to both parties.

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It's a belt forty feet wide, and goes around the outer fence -- distance between it and the fence one hundred yards -- kind of neutral ground that space is.

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Individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad and natural boundaries, even a considerable neutral ground, between them.

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They generally quarreled at night, and met on the neutral ground of the shrubbery to be reconciled together the next morning.

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"This strip between the ice barrier and the mountains is considered neutral ground. Some turn off from their voluntary pilgrimage down the Iss, and, scaling the awful walls of its canyon below us, stop in the valley.

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The library is not used by the Man of Wrath ; it is neutral ground where we meet in the evenings for an hour before he disappears into his own rooms--a series of very smoky dens in the southeast corner of the house.

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Whether it was that they were meeting on neutral ground to-night, or whether the carelessness of an old grey coat that Denham wore gave an ease to his bearing that he lacked in conventional dress, Katharine certainly felt no impulse to consider him outside the particular set in which she lived.