1. the group of people comprising the government of a sovereign state;
"the state has lowered its income tax"
2. the territory occupied by one of the constituent administrative districts of a nation;
"his state is in the deep south"
3. a politically organized body of people under a single government;
"the state has elected a new president"
"African nations"
"students who had come to the nation's capitol"
"the country's largest manufacturer"
"an industrialized land"
4. the way something is with respect to its main attributes;
"the current state of knowledge"
"his state of health"
"in a weak financial state"
5. the territory occupied by a nation;
"he returned to the land of his birth"
"he visited several European countries"
6. a state of depression or agitation;
"he was in such a state you just couldn't reason with him"
7. (chemistry) the three traditional states of matter are solids (fixed shape and volume) and liquids (fixed volume and shaped by the container) and gases (filling the container);