ghetto

[get-oh]

noun

plural

ghettos, ghettoes 

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.

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

/ 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

Word History and Origins

Origin of ghetto¹

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

Word History and Origins

Origin of ghetto¹

C17: from Italian, perhaps shortened from borghetto, diminutive of borgo settlement outside a walled city; or from the Venetian ghetto the medieval iron-founding district, largely inhabited by Jews

Example Sentences

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.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

The U.S. doesn’t want ethnic ghettos, such as the French Muslim banlieues.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

He compares Palestinian terrorists to the insurgents of the Warsaw ghetto.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

He joined the ghetto uprising as a teenager in 1943, helping to make petrol bombs.

Read more on BBC

Starvation in Gaza today summons up my grandmother’s stories of how her family starved to death in the Warsaw ghetto.

Read more on Los Angeles Times