Lithuania
Americannoun
noun
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Occupied by German forces during World War II, at which time thousands of Lithuanian Jews (see also Jews) were exterminated.
As the communist system began to collapse and the Soviet Union began to dissolve, Lithuania became the first of the Baltic republics to reject Soviet rule, declaring its independence in March 1990.
Lithuania was one of the largest and most powerful states in Europe from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, at which time it merged with Poland. In the late eighteenth century, it was absorbed by Russia. A nationalist movement that grew in strength throughout the nineteenth century finally bore fruit when the Russian empire collapsed during World War I. Lithuanians achieved their desired goal of an independent state during the interwar years, but their country was occupied and annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, as were the neighboring countries of Estonia and Latvia.
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The paternal great-grandmother of goalie Matt Turner fled religious persecution in Lithuania, with his Jewish ancestors changing their family name from Turnovski to Turner when they arrived at Ellis Island.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 15, 2026
Estonia in 2025 was the fourth-highest spender on defense as a share of its GDP among the alliance’s 32 allies, behind its close neighbors Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 28, 2026
Lithuania's national crisis management centre earlier said it had issued an alert in response to a drone in neighbouring Belarus that was seen flying towards Lithuania.
From BBC • May 20, 2026
Several Russian and Ukrainian drones have crashed in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
From Barron's • May 14, 2026
I wondered what I would have thought of Andrius in Lithuania.
From "Between Shades of Gray" by Ruta Sepetys
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
