area

American  

[air-ee-uh] / ˈɛər i ə /

noun

1. any particular extent of space or surface; part.

   the dark areas in the painting;

   the dusty area of the room.

2. a geographical region; tract: the unsettled areas along the frontier.

   the Chicago area;

   the unsettled areas along the frontier.

3. any section reserved for a specific function: the dining area of a house.

   the business area of a town;

   the dining area of a house.

4. extent, range, or scope.

   inquiries that embrace the whole area of science.

5. field of study, or a branch of a field of study.

   Related areas of inquiry often reflect borrowed notions.

6. a piece of unoccupied ground; an open space.

7. the space or site on which a building stands; the yard attached to or surrounding a house.

8. British. areaway.

9. the quantitative measure of a plane or curved surface; two-dimensional extent.

10. Anatomy. a zone of the cerebral cortex having a specific function.

    The damage to Broca's area affected his speech.

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area British  

/ ˈɛərɪə /

noun

1. any flat, curved, or irregular expanse of a surface

2. 1. the extent of a two-dimensional surface enclosed within a specified boundary or geometric figure

      the area of Ireland

      the area of a triangle

   2. the two-dimensional extent of the surface of a solid, or of some part thereof, esp one bounded by a closed curve

      the area of a sphere

3. a section, portion, or part

   an area of the body

   an area of the sky

4. region; district; locality

   a mountainous area

5. 1. a geographical division of administrative responsibility

   2. ( as modifier )

      area manager

6. a part or section, as of a building, town, etc, having some specified function or characteristic

   reception area

   commercial area

   slum area

7. Also called: areaway.  a sunken area, usually enclosed, giving light, air, and sometimes access to a cellar or basement

8. the range, extent, or scope of anything

9. a subject field or field of study

10. any unoccupied or unused flat open piece of ground

11. the ground on which a building stands, or the ground surrounding a building

12. anatomy any of the various regions of the cerebral cortex

13. computing any part of a computer memory assigned to store data of a specified type

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area Scientific  

/ âr′ē-ə /

1. The extent of a surface or plane figure as measured in square units.

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area Idioms  

1. see gray area.

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Other Word Forms

• areal
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of area

First recorded in 1530–40; fram Latin ārea “vacant piece of level ground, open space in a town, threshing floor”; perhaps akin to ārēre “to be dry”; see also arid

Explanation

The area is a part of a place, usually defined by a function. If you can't stop talking, don't sit in the quiet area of the library. In Latin, area means a vacant piece of ground, but we use it in English to talk about a region or place that's a subset of another larger region. The boarding area in the airport is the space right next to the door. Area is also used to describe topics or subjects of study or work. Within a big history department, professors have different areas of specialty, from medieval economics to urban American politics.

Example Sentences

The Broadview immigration facility, a temporary detention center, became a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s effort to increase enforcement in the Chicago area during what it called “Operation Midway Blitz” last fall.

From The Wall Street Journal • May 22, 2026

Fire Department spokesperson Andrew Dowd said monitoring had been “deployed to establish a background air quality, so that if the fire advances further into that sensitive area we would have a baseline to compare against.”

From Los Angeles Times • May 22, 2026

Wide swaths of Southern California are under a smoke advisory through Thursday night, as wildfires burn across the area.

From Los Angeles Times • May 21, 2026

But there have been calls for assurances that any sales would benefit local communities and tenants in the Bradninch estate area, near Cullompton, in Devon, which was put up for sale in March 2026.

From BBC • May 21, 2026

Earlier, even though there were no other people in the area, he’d heard the magpies cawing, and a squirrel had complained when Jonathan tossed a rock.

From "Earthquake Terror" by Peg Kehret

Related Words

• city
• county
• field
• locality
• neighborhood
• section
• sector
• square
• state
• territory
• township
• zone