In every language in which we have tested this, "frontier" means something nearly opposite to its American sense. The French Larousse gives only one meaning for frontière, and that is the border between two nations--which in an oft-invaded country like France conjures up danger rather than opportunity. In Mandarin Chinese the term is bian jie or "boundary." In Cantonese, the word for frontier is huang di, which carries a negative connotation of "wilderness" or "wasteland." A frontier is a barren hardship post, not a place of opportunities, explains a Chinese colleague.

Russians have a very similar attitude toward frontiers. A Russian who discovered that one of these authors maintains his judicial chambers in Alaska blurted out, "Why were you sent?" The idea that there might be appeal in an assignment on America's Alaskan frontier seemed incomprehensible to him.

During America's expansion westward, frontier transformed into the very opposite of a boundary or limit. Its primary meaning in American English came to be a "boundless realm of possibility." Indeed some foreign dictionaries call this meaning of "frontier" an "Americanism."