Region can be used to mean:

1. Any considerable and connected part of a space or surface; specifically, a tract of land or sea of considerable but indefinite extent; a country; a district; in a broad sense, a place without special reference to location or extent but viewed as an entity for geographical, social or cultural reasons. The proper techniques of space delimitation covers regionalization.

   the equatorial regions

   the temperate regions

   the polar regions

   the upper regions of the atmosphere

2. An administrative subdivision of a city, a territory, a country or the European Union.
3. The geographically-specific encoding present on many commercially-produced DVDs.
4. (historical) Such a division of the city of Rome and of the territory about Rome, of which the number varied at different times; a district, quarter, or ward.
5. (figuratively) The inhabitants of a region or district of a country.
6. (anatomy) A place in or a part of the body in any way indicated.

   the abdominal regions

7. {obsolete} Place; rank; station; dignity.
8. {obsolete} The space from the earth's surface out to the orbit of the moon: properly called the elemental region.
9. For the QuickDraw data structure, see QuickDraw.

Regions are conceptual constructs and, thus, may vary among cultures and individuals.

Administrative regions

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The word "region" is taken from the Latin regio, and a number of countries have borrowed the term as the formal name for a type of subnational entity (eg, the región, used in Chile). In English, the word is also used as the conventional translation for equivalent terms in other languages (e.g., the область (oblast), used in Russia alongside with a broader term регион).

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NPR Topics: Politics & Society

Letter About Palin Goes Viral
Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:05:00 -0400
This week in Wasilla, Alaska, a woman named Anne Kilkenny sent a letter to some college friends about her former mayor, Sarah Palin. By week's end, the letter was pinging around the country and Kilkenny's phone was ringing off the hook.
Teen Sex, Sex Education And Sarah Palin
Fri, 05 Sep 2008 16:39:00 -0400
Gov. Sarah Palin has been a strong supporter of programs that advocate abstinence until marriage, and she also opposes explicit sex education. Alaska's law is silent on these issues, however, and it provides no specific funding for sex education in the schools.
Examining Palin's Pentecostal Background
Fri, 05 Sep 2008 16:14:00 -0400
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has electrified religious conservatives who see her as one of their own. The Republican vice presidential candidate brings evangelical credentials to the ticket and has a Pentecostal background.

The Talk of the Town

Dorothy Wickenden: An old-style, Los Angeles feminist on Obama.
Dorothy Wickenden Fri, 29 Aug 2008 04:00:00 -0000
Rosalind Wyman--seventy-seven years old; doughty feminist; political fund-raiser and philanthropist; hostess to J.F.K., Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton, and Hollywood types too numerous to count; youngest elected member of the Los Angeles City Council (at the age of twenty-two); first woman to run a national political . . .
Lauren Collins: The Brooklyn painter Kehinde Wiley.
Lauren Collins Mon, 25 Aug 2008 04:00:00 -0000
The painter Kehinde Wiley first travelled to Nigeria in 1997. He was trying to find his father, whom he had never met, or, more crucially for a portraitist, seen. (His mother didn’t have any photographs.) After several weeks in Lagos, he found his dad, who welcomed him. But--like any . . .
James Surowiecki: What drives market volatility?
James Surowiecki Mon, 25 Aug 2008 04:00:00 -0000
American investors are frazzled. True, oil prices have fallen from their most vertiginous highs, the dollar is a bit stronger, and the stock market has actually risen over the past month. But none of those things have happened in a smooth and steady fashion. The stock market’s “ascent,” in particular . . .

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