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colonia

American  
[kuh-loh-nee-uh, -lohn-yuh, kaw-law-nyah] / kəˈloʊ ni ə, -ˈloʊn jə, kɔˈlɔ njɑ /

noun

  • colonias
    plural
  1. (in the southwestern U.S.) a city neighborhood or a rural settlement inhabited predominantly by Mexicans or Mexican Americans.


Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

Etymology

Origin of colonia

< Mexican Spanish: newly built or settled district of a city; Spanish: plantation, colony

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:

Noemi Hernandez, 56, paid $22,500 in 2001 for a lot in a small colonia called Salida del Sol.

From New York Times ● Jul. 29, 2023

Mostly, immigrants want to get through the colonia as fast as possible.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 17, 2018

The Indian Hills colonia is a maze of tumbledown homes with dirt yards and high chain-link fencing, each one like a cage protecting it from the next.

From The Guardian ● Nov. 19, 2018

More than 40 percent of colonia residents live below the poverty line, and 20 percent live at the line, according to the report.

From Scientific American ● Apr. 23, 2018

The cantonal civitas had its duoviri and quaestors and so forth, and its ordo or senate, precisely like any municipal colonia or municipium.

From The Romanization of Roman Britain by F. (Francis) Haverfield

The immigrant population in the colonias has limited English proficiency, health literacy levels, and income, and lower levels of formal education.

From Science Daily ● Apr. 26, 2024

The problem hits hard in Appalachia, as well as in central Mississippi and Alabama, the colonias along the Texas-Mexico border, the Navajo Nation in the Southwest, and California’s Central Valley.

From Washington Post ● Jun. 27, 2021

Father explained: It was our word, colonias, the one we sometimes used for neighborhoods, and Tía Rosa still said it.

From Slate ● Dec. 29, 2020

About half a million Texas border residents live in so-called colonias across the U.S. side of the border, which often lack basic amenities such as running water.

From Salon ● Apr. 5, 2020

Five years ago, he was dispatched to El Buen Pastor in Sparks, one of the impoverished colonias around El Paso, where residents had fought for years for access to water, sewage and electricity services.

From New York Times ● Aug. 11, 2019

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