Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- Africa considered as mysterious, especially to Europeans and people of European descent, chiefly when its interior was largely unknown to them. Henry M. Stanley was probably the first to use the term in Through the Dark Continent (1878).
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun dated, informal
Africa .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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If a backwoods gal like me in the deep south of the Dark Continent can know that Sam Worthington has acting kudos ("Somersault") and the ability to blow A-listers off the screen ("Terminator Salvation") just by rocking up for the shoot, then how come more of you don't know this guy's body of work?
Sam Worthington In Negotiations For Role As Alex Proyas’ Dracula | /Film 2010
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Highlands, might have travelled across the Dark Continent, where it has now been superseded by El Islam.
Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo 2003
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* H.M. Stanley: _Through the Dark Continent_, 2 vols.,
The Negro 1915
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Along the coast here and there were points occupied temporarily by white traders and travellers, but the interior of the Dark Continent was known only through the tales of the slave-catchers, who brought to the coast the black people they had gathered like so many cattle in the interior.
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Semitic influences, in successive waves, spread over the Dark Continent as far as Morocco, the Senegal, Niger, Lake Chad,
Influences of Geographic Environment On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography Ellen Churchill Semple 1897
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Here, then, we have the first serious division of the Dark Continent.
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We have now reached the culmination of the Providential events leading to the division of the Dark Continent.
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The eighteenth century was practically a century of stagnation so far as the division of the Dark Continent was concerned.
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Communication with these hilly districts situated far in the interior of the Dark Continent is certainly difficult; but that is a condition necessary to us at first.
Freeland A Social Anticipation Theodor Hertzka 1884
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Zimbabwe was once called the bread basket of the Dark Continent, and now it is reduced to a desperate state.
tcpalm.com Stories 2010
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