Articles of Confederation

[ahr-ti-kuhlz uhv kuhn-fed-uh-rey-shuhn]

Phonetic (Standard)IPA

noun

(used with a plural verb)

the first constitution of the 13 American states, adopted in 1781 and replaced in 1789 by the Constitution of the United States.

Articles of Confederation

plural noun

the agreement made by the original 13 states in 1777 establishing a confederacy to be known as the United States of America; replaced by the Constitution of 1788

Articles of Confederation

An agreement among the thirteen original states, approved in 1781, that provided a loose federal government before the present Constitution went into effect in 1789. There was no chief executive or judiciary, and the legislature of the Confederation had no authority to collect taxes.

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Example Sentences

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Washington was asked by his beloved Virginia to take part in a convention charged with revising the Articles of Confederation, the first American constitution.

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It’s worth noting that the Articles of Confederation were explicitly perpetual — no state could leave on its own.

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They had failures; their first effort, the Articles of Confederation, collapsed.

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And under the Articles of Confederation, no person could serve as a delegate to Congress “for more than three years in any term of six years.”

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Distressed by the political disarray in the state governments in the 1780s and the congenital weakness of the Articles of Confederation, Madison had helped mobilize the movement for the Constitutional Convention.

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articles of association Articles of War

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