milieu
Americannoun
-
milieus,
plural
-
milieux
plural
noun
Synonym Usage
See environment.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of milieu
First recorded in 1795–1805; from French, equivalent to mi (from Latin medius “middle”; see medium) + lieu lieu
Explanation
A milieu is a surrounding culture. Your family, house, neighborhood, school, and people you hang out with make up your milieu. For example, if you live in a mansion and have rich friends, you’re part of the upper crust milieu. A milieu is both "surroundings" and everything that makes up the surroundings. Your milieu is your world, or the context you come from. Sometimes a milieu shapes a person, as when a "milieu of abuse and poverty," inspires someone to improve things for others. Milieu sounds a lot like mildew without the "d," but unless you grew up in a moldy bathtub, mildew probably has little to do with your milieu, or environment.
Vocabulary lists containing milieu
100 SAT Words Beginning with "M"
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
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A Walk in the Woods
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
“If he’d been born in the U.S. he’d be the CEO of a company or some wunderkind. It’s sort of unfortunate he was born in the milieu that he was. He’d be successful anywhere.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 21, 2026
Andrew Burstein’s “Being Thomas Jefferson” is a biography with the history dialed down, concentrating on Jefferson’s thoughts, personality, relationships and milieu.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 26, 2026
To those in Griffin’s milieu, or who aspire to be, the video was a distasteful and even dangerous broadside against the city’s wealthy.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 15, 2026
The portraits play off the novel’s milieu: a series of churches, as well as the medieval French castle that is home to an eccentric and mostly absent prince.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 22, 2026
In real life I am moderately brave, but plenty of brave people shed their courage in POW camps, and maybe something similar goes on in the infinitely more congenial milieu of the low-wage American workplace.
From "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" by Barbara Ehrenreich
Schumer, 74, and Jeffries, 55, hail from different Brooklyn milieus.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 27, 2025
These narratives are like the water that we swim in, and hence are invisible to many people within these milieus.
From Salon ● Jul. 29, 2023
Her writing and exploits took her through the worlds of L.A. literature, art, film and music, milieus she described indelibly and influenced deeply.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 23, 2021
These sprawling novels of galactic milieus, giant orbitals and even larger A.I. ships and their various machinations offer one of the most compelling and sustained visions of a far-flung future.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 17, 2021
Oppenheimer recognized that their social milieus were fated to remain distinct.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
Forests, for example, release a complex chemical milieux into the air.
From Science Daily ● May 15, 2024
These scientific milieux shaped their inquiries and practices, and enabled them to contest and advance knowledge.
From Nature ● Sep. 16, 2019
The way Kahlo’s work and persona were read in Mexico was of course very different from the way they were translated into other cultural milieux.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 11, 2018
From the mucousy milieux of Alien's xenomorphs to the synthetic, sentient puddle of Terminator 2's T-1000, there was something especially slimy running straight through the 1980s.
From The Verge ● Aug. 23, 2017
Young Hitchcock had returned recently to the family lumber yards on the West Side and the family residence on Michigan Avenue, with about equal disgust, so Sommers judged, for both milieux.
From The Web of Life by Robert Herrick
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
