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:
“It seems like they haven’t really given credit to women in an independent milieu who have organized a lot of female-only shows for years,” Brownstein told the Dallas Observer in 1998.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 3, 2026
She used her opportunity to create a warts-and-all portrait of her over-educated and downwardly mobile milieu.
From Salon ● Aug. 30, 2026
Once outside the walls of Buddyland and into the surrounding wilderness, Kelly shifts from boxy TV framing and video texture to a cinematic widescreen ratio, but the milieu still seems half-real, half-stylized.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 28, 2026
Its title is taken from the name of a New York club of considerable legend, and Madonna uses the setting to reminisce about her wild days in this milieu.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 7, 2026
Obviously, the environment or the milieu that surrounds an organism contributes to its physical attributes.
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
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 remake runs twenty minutes longer than the original—twenty minutes that detail Priest’s audacious maneuverings and their grim effects in milieux left unexplored by the earlier film.
From The New Yorker ● Jun. 15, 2018
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
Wonderful must it clearly have been still to fed amid laxities and vaguenesses such a difference of milieux and, as they used to say, of atmospheres.
From A Small Boy and Others by Henry James
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
