ghetto

American  

[get-oh] / ˈgɛt oʊ /

noun

• ghettos,
  plural
• ghettoes
  plural

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.

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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 British  

/ 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

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• ghettoes
  plural
• ghettos
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of ghetto

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

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Explanation

Ghetto means a crowded poor part of a city lived in by a specific ethnic group. The word is powerful, often associated with a rich cultural heritage or a sense of shame and a desire to escape. While most ghettos are formed through social forces (immigration, real estate values, public housing), in European cities during the time of the Nazi Holocaust (1939-1944), Jews were required by law to live in designated, often walled ghettos. Today, the word ghetto can also be used to describe non-geographic, but similarly cut off situations where one might feel stuck: "the academic ghetto."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

ghetto ghettoes ghettos

In 1943, she, the remaining members of her family and some 250 other prisoners dug a 600-foot underground tunnel using spoons to escape the Jewish ghetto, as he recounted in another Colossus podcast.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 30, 2026

“He could relate to my problems, my environment. The drive, the determination, not to give in to the ghetto, to make something of my life, stems from my relations with him.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 8, 2026

One black TikTok user from Croydon called C.Tino posted a response, saying the trend falsely portrayed the area as "ghetto".

From BBC ● Feb. 21, 2026

He has faced a concerted challenge from singer-turned-politician Bobi Wine, 43, who styles himself the "ghetto president", after his stronghold in a slum where he grew up in the capital, Kampala.

From Barron's ● Jan. 15, 2026

And Olka had managed to get herself a job as a courier at the Eagle Pharmacy, the sole Polish-owned business that was permitted to stay open within the ghetto walls.

From "Not Nothing" by Gayle Forman

He defines “concentrationary” to include all circumstances in which there’s a punitive concentration of people, including in ghettoes.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 9, 2026

Exhibit A: Catch a Fire opener Concrete Jungle’s powerfully bleak reportage, allegedly written not about Kingston’s ghettoes, but Marley’s mid-60s stay in the US.

From The Guardian ● Nov. 19, 2020

“Rather than looking at ghettoes with a white point of view, we give dignity back to the ghettoes,” he said.

From The New Yorker ● Apr. 9, 2017

Over the past decade, as gay people have become more accepted and gay ghettoes have begun to empty out, I’ve noticed that the extremely muscled gay aesthetic has begun to fade away, especially among twenty-somethings.

From Salon ● Dec. 16, 2012

I don’t know if you know it, but there’s a whole circuit of commercial gospel entertainers who have come out of these little churches in the city ghettoes or from down South.

From "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Alex Malcolm X;Hailey

Following World War I, fantastic “art” was largely identified with Surrealism, while popular fantasy was mostly quartered within the new mass-market ghettos of pulps, comics, film marketing and paperback books.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 21, 2025

It is not clear exactly how many Jews survived the death camps, the ghettos or somewhere in hiding across Nazi-occupied Europe, but their numbers were a far cry from the pre-war Jewish population in Europe.

From Seattle Times ● Jan. 22, 2024

Gessen had been scheduled to receive the Arendt Prize for political thought this week, but the ceremony was postponed following outrage over the essay’s comparison between Gaza and Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe.

From New York Times ● Dec. 15, 2023

The Jewish physician survivors were able to tell the histories of Jewish medical resistance in the ghettos and camps.

From Science Magazine ● Nov. 9, 2023

“Martins right,” said my father “And Hitler’s setting up a system of ghettos in Poland.”

From "Between Shades of Gray" by Ruta Sepetys

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