ghetto

[ get-oh ]

noun

, plural ghet·tos, ghet·toes.

1. a section of a city, especially a thickly populated slum area, inhabited predominantly by members of an ethnic or other minority group, often as a result of social pressures or economic hardships.
2. (formerly, in most European countries) a section of a city in which all Jews were required to live.
3. any mode of living, working, etc., that results from stereotyping or biased treatment:

   job ghettos for women; ghettos for the elderly.

adjective

1. pertaining to or characteristic of life in a ghetto or the people who live there:

   ghetto culture.

2. Slang: Often Disparaging and Offensive. noting something that is considered to be unrefined, low-class, cheap, or inferior.

ghetto

/ ˈɡɛtəʊ /

noun

1. sociol a densely populated slum area of a city inhabited by a socially and economically deprived minority
2. an area in a European city in which Jews were formerly required to live
3. a group or class of people that is segregated in some way

Word History and Origins

Origin of ghetto¹

First recorded in 1605–15; from Italian, originally the name of an island near Venice where Jews were forced to reside in the 16th century, from Venetian dialect: literally, “foundry for artillery” (giving the island its name); futher origin uncertain

Word History and Origins

Origin of ghetto¹

C17: from Italian, perhaps shortened from borghetto, diminutive of borgo settlement outside a walled city; or from the Venetian ghetto the medieval iron-founding district, largely inhabited by Jews

Example Sentences

The San Francisco Chronicle documented a man in the Bay Area worrying that affordable housing might turn his area into a “ghetto.”

From Vox

Relegated to low-class jobs and living in crowded ethnic ghettos, the Irish were portrayed as undesirable immigrants with less-than-average intelligence, who were prone to criminality.

From Washington Post

Sophie, as a teen, was imprisoned in the Vilna ghetto from 1941 to 1943.

From Washington Post

In 1975, FBI Deputy Associate Director James Adams testified before the Senate that the bureau had three times as many “ghetto informants” as confidential sources within the Klan — as good an index as any of the agency's priorities.

From Washington Post

An equal pay for work of equal value clause insulates women from the wage inequity inherent in pink ghetto jobs, or jobs that are underpaid by virtue of being predominantly female.

From Fortune

Neither was there a return to the loyal but small ghetto of Charter 77.

From The Daily Beast

Although, I think all those ghetto/goth kids are doing something with Melissa Burns; all the weirdo kids.

From The Daily Beast

What about the ghetto residents who exhibit “mainstream” values on working, education, and child-rearing?

From The Daily Beast

His father was executed in 1942 by a German gendarme after attempting to smuggle a packet of saccharine into the Ghetto.

From The Daily Beast

Yet Three Crosses Square was something of a haven from the horrors of war and the nearby ghetto.

From The Daily Beast

For, in truth, the exterior appearance and the entrance-chambers are the worst part of the Ghetto dwellings.

From Project Gutenberg

But the name of the Old Jewry reminds us of the ghetto which was an important part of old London.

From Project Gutenberg

To this roaming, hunting, exploring, adventurous breed what greater contrast is there than the denizens of the Ghetto?

From Project Gutenberg

Hence it has been suggested Judaicam became Italian Giudeica and thence became corrupted into ghetto.

From Project Gutenberg

They belong among the best Ghetto stories that have been written in New York, and they display undoubted talent.

From Project Gutenberg