Definition of "borderline" []

• A line that establishes or marks a border. (noun)
• An indefinite area intermediate between two qualities or conditions: The borderline between love and hate is often thin. (noun)
• Verging on a given quality or condition: borderline poverty. (adjective)
• Of a questionable nature or quality: an applicant with borderline qualifications. (adjective)
• Psychology Relating to any phenomenon that is intermediate between two groups and not clearly categorized in either group: a borderline state showing the characteristics of both neurotic and psychotic reactions. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The term borderline has come into increasing use in the last thirty years, in describing a severe form of psychopathology."
• "Kernberg stressed the role of the overabundance of constitutionally predisposed aggression or very early frustration rather than maternal care that color the ways they experience their caretakers as resulting in the development of the intermediate level of structure, which he called borderline personality organization."
• "When he was eventually caught in 2000 after delivering a particularly eye-opening interview with Christina Ricci and a rival blew the whistle, he refused to say sorry, insisting that he specialised in what he called "borderline journalism"."