Originally Posted by
pinniped
I've actually had this conversation with friends before. We went to dinner and a show in Windsor last year...joked about taking a "trip abroad". Or, since we did cross a body of water, "overseas". (OK, so it was a river...)
Outside of a joke, I'd never use "abroad" for Canada or Mexico, or anything Caribbean. Technically Webster may give me the right to, but it still sounds silly. Just like I probably wouldn't say "overseas" for Hawaii or the Caribbean, even though it technically is. It'd bound to gather some rolled eyes from your audience.
Just as people in Belgium are unlikely to say they going abroad when they spend a few hours in France, and my Thai friends don't consider a weekend in Singapore 'going abroad'. The term has (misleading) colloquial connotations of travelling somewhere exotic, like going from Lansing, Michigan, to Rangpur or Saigon, but technically it comes down to crossing the border.