sunbelt

English

From sun +‎ belt. Purportedly coined by American politician Sam Rayburn.

sunbelt (plural sunbelts)

(chiefly US) An area or belt of land that receives a lot of sun; specifically, a zone comprising the southern and western states of the USA where the weather is typically sunny, characterised by an influx of population from the north and often typified as having conservative political views. [from 20th c.]
- 1987, Joan Didion, Miami, Granta 2005, p. 51:
  Anglos to whom I talked in Miami […] persisted in the related illusions that the city was small, manageable, prosperous in a predictable broad-based way, southern in a progressive sunbelt way, American, and belonged to them.
- 1995, Eugene P. Moehring, Resort City in the Sunbelt: Las Vegas, 1930–1970, University of Nevada Press, →ISBN, page 13:
  Lack of water, fertile land, productive mines, and heavy industry made it an unlikely candidate. But the same forces which forged the new west and lured millions of people to the sunbelt, also boosted Las Vegas.

region of the US