ghetto

American  

[get-oh] / ˈgɛt oʊ /

noun

• ghettos,
  plural
• ghettoes
  plural

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.

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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 British  

/ 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

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• ghettoes
  plural
• ghettos
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of ghetto

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

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Explanation

Ghetto means a crowded poor part of a city lived in by a specific ethnic group. The word is powerful, often associated with a rich cultural heritage or a sense of shame and a desire to escape. While most ghettos are formed through social forces (immigration, real estate values, public housing), in European cities during the time of the Nazi Holocaust (1939-1944), Jews were required by law to live in designated, often walled ghettos. Today, the word ghetto can also be used to describe non-geographic, but similarly cut off situations where one might feel stuck: "the academic ghetto."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

ghetto ghettoes ghettos

In 1943, she, the remaining members of her family and some 250 other prisoners dug a 600-foot underground tunnel using spoons to escape the Jewish ghetto, as he recounted in another Colossus podcast.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 30, 2026

Their grandmother, Rae, escaped from a Jewish ghetto in what was then the Polish city of Novogrudok by clawing her way through a tunnel.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 15, 2026

“He could relate to my problems, my environment. The drive, the determination, not to give in to the ghetto, to make something of my life, stems from my relations with him.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 8, 2026

He has faced a concerted challenge from singer-turned-politician Bobi Wine, 43, who styles himself the "ghetto president", after his stronghold in a slum where he grew up in the capital, Kampala.

From Barron's ● Jan. 15, 2026

I run that way, along the ghetto fence and into a neighborhood of apartments.

From "The Light in Hidden Places" by Sharon Cameron

He defines “concentrationary” to include all circumstances in which there’s a punitive concentration of people, including in ghettoes.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 9, 2026

Malcolm was convinced that the establishment of the time might tolerate black leaders as long as they stayed in the ghettoes.

From The Guardian ● Feb. 19, 2019

“Rather than looking at ghettoes with a white point of view, we give dignity back to the ghettoes,” he said.

From The New Yorker ● Apr. 9, 2017

Over the past decade, as gay people have become more accepted and gay ghettoes have begun to empty out, I’ve noticed that the extremely muscled gay aesthetic has begun to fade away, especially among twenty-somethings.

From Salon ● Dec. 16, 2012

I don’t know if you know it, but there’s a whole circuit of commercial gospel entertainers who have come out of these little churches in the city ghettoes or from down South.

From "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Alex Malcolm X;Hailey

After the exhibition’s stark presentation on Jewish ghettos, Nazi killing squads and concentration camps, the class photo reappears.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 25, 2025

Others were played to pass the time in Jewish ghettos.

From New York Times ● Mar. 21, 2024

The Jewish physician survivors were able to tell the histories of Jewish medical resistance in the ghettos and camps.

From Science Magazine ● Nov. 9, 2023

It was the largest of many ghettos across occupied Poland.

From Seattle Times ● Apr. 19, 2023

They were the same ghettos I had seen in Chicago all those years ago, the same ghettos where my mother was raised, where my father was raised.

From "Between the World and Me" by Ta-Nehisi Coates

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