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suburb - 4 dictionary results

sub⋅urb

  [suhb-urb]
Use suburb in a Sentence
–noun
1. a district lying immediately outside a city or town, esp. a smaller residential community.
2. the suburbs, the area composed of such districts.
3. an outlying part.
Origin:
1350–1400; ME < L suburbium, equiv. to sub- sub- + urb(s) city + -ium -ium

Related forms:
suburbed, adjective
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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sub·urb   (sŭb'ûrb')   
n.  
  1. A usually residential area or community outlying a city.
  2. suburbs The usually residential region around a major city; the environs.

[Middle English suburbe, from Old French, from Latin suburbium : sub-, sub- + urbs, urb-, city.]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Suburb

Sub"urb\, n. [L. suburbium; sub under, below, near + urbs a city. See Urban.]

1. An outlying part of a city or town; a smaller place immediately adjacent to a city; in the plural, the region which is on the confines of any city or large town; as, a house stands in the suburbs; a garden situated in the suburbs of Paris. "In the suburbs of a town." --Chaucer.

[London] could hardly have contained less than thirty or forty thousand souls within its walls; and the suburbs were very populous. --Hallam.

2. Hence, the confines; the outer part; the environment. "The suburbs . . . of sorrow." --Jer. Taylor.

The suburb of their straw-built citadel. --Milton.

Suburb roister, a rowdy; a loafer. [Obs.] --Milton.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
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Language Translation for : suburb
Spanish: afueras,
German: der Vorort,
Japanese: 郊外
More Translations »

suburb 
c.1340 (implied in suburban), "residential area outside a town or city," from O.Fr. suburbe, from L. suburbium "an outlying part of a city," from sub "below, near" + urbs (gen. urbis) "city." Close to crowds but just beyond the reach of municipal jurisdiction, suburbs in 17c., especially those of London, had a sense of "inferior, debased, and licentious habits or life" (e.g. suburban sinner, slang for "loose woman, prostitute"). By 1817, the tinge had shifted to "inferior manners and narrow views." Compare also Fr. equivalent faubourg. Suburbanite formed 1890; suburbia first attested 1896, probably influenced by utopia, originally in England with ref. to London.
"[T]he growth of the metropolis throws vast numbers of people into distant dormitories where ... life is carried on without the discipline of rural occupations and without the cultural resources that the Central District of the city still retains." [Lewis Mumford, 1922]
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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