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Freedonia


Freedonia is the name given to several fictional countries. Freedonian was probably first used by Americans immediately after the American Revolution in place of the demonym "American". The term Freedonia was later popularized by the 1933 Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup. Over time, however, the word has come to have a more generic meaning. It can be anything from a noun describing a plausible yet fictional country, to an adjective ("Freedonian") used to characterize a place like the Freedonia of Duck Soup. Because the Marx Brothers' Freedonia had so many qualities—, diminutiveness, and obscurity, to name but a few — a place can be described as "Freedonian" for having any one of these qualities.

In Vol. VI, Part IV, of the Medical Repository, 1803, pp. 449–50, Dr. Samuel Mitchill, wrote the following under the heading of "Medical and Philosophical News":

Proposal to the American literati, and to all the citizens of the United States, to employ the following names and epithets for the country and nation to which they belong; which, at the distance of 27 years from the declaration and of 20 years from the acknowledgment of their independence, are to this day destitute of proper geographical and political denominations, whereby they may be aptly distinguished from the other regions and peoples of the earth:

Fredon, the aggregate noun for the whole territory of the United States.

Fredonia, a noun of same import, for rhetorical and poetical use.

Fredonian, a sonorous name for 'a citizen of the United States'.

Frede, a short and colloquial name for 'a citizen of the United States'.

Fredish, an adjective to denote the relations and concerns of the United States

Example. Fredon is probably better supplied with the materials of her own history than Britain, France, or any country in the world, and the reason is obvious, for the attention of the Fredonians was much sooner directed, after their settlement, to the collection and preservations of their facts and records than that of the Dutch and Irish. Hence it will happen that the events of Fredish history will be more minutely known and better understood than those of Russian, Turkish, or Arabic. And thereby the time will be noted carefully when a native of this land, on being asked who he is and whence he came, began to answer in one word that he is a Frede, instead of using the tedious circumlocution that he was "a citizen of the United States of America." And in the like manner notice will be taken of the association of Fredonia and Macedonia and Caledonia as a word equally potent and melodious in sound.


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