gentrify
Americanverb (used with object)
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to alter (a deteriorated urban neighborhood) through the buying and renovation of houses and stores by upper- or middle-income families or individuals, raising property values but often displacing low-income families and small businesses.
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to conform to an upper- or middle-class lifestyle; make appealing to those with more affluent tastes.
Fish and chips have been gentrified.
verb (used without object)
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of gentrify
Explanation
To gentrify is to fix up a neighborhood so that wealthier people want to move there, with the unfortunate result that poor residents can't afford to live there anymore. This process often begins when middle-class people start buying and sprucing up homes in a poor neighborhood. Over time, more well-off people move in, along with hip coffee shops and fancy restaurants and shops — and house prices and rents go way up. It takes a while to gentrify a whole neighborhood, but eventually it becomes nearly impossible for lower-income people to stay. Gentrify is from gentry, or "nobility," and its root, which means "high-born."
Vocabulary lists containing gentrify
There Goes the Neighborhood
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Nigeria Jones
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Invisible Son
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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.
Working with UC Berkeley city and regional planning professor Karen Chapelle, she found those census tracts closest to the stations were much more likely to gentrify, especially if they were already seeing rising housing prices.
From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 7, 2022
“I could go stand there with a sign and say ‘don’t gentrify this Black community, hashtag cancel’ or I could actually do something more permanent,” she said.
From New York Times • Dec. 7, 2021
As more big businesses started to come in and gentrify all of Broadway, seeing that happen, it was traumatizing honestly.
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 1, 2021
Property developers should lure displaced Americans to gentrify the Rust Belt along the Great Lakes.
From Washington Post • Nov. 17, 2021
He has watched other parts of metropolitan Cincinnati, including the West End and Over-the-Rhine, gentrify in ways that displaced longtime Black residents.
From Slate • Sep. 26, 2021
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.
