milieu
Americannoun
-
milieus,
plural
-
milieux
plural
noun
Synonym Usage
See environment.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of milieu
First recorded in 1795–1805; from French, equivalent to mi (from Latin medius “middle”; see medium) + lieu lieu
Explanation
A milieu is a surrounding culture. Your family, house, neighborhood, school, and people you hang out with make up your milieu. For example, if you live in a mansion and have rich friends, you’re part of the upper crust milieu. A milieu is both "surroundings" and everything that makes up the surroundings. Your milieu is your world, or the context you come from. Sometimes a milieu shapes a person, as when a "milieu of abuse and poverty," inspires someone to improve things for others. Milieu sounds a lot like mildew without the "d," but unless you grew up in a moldy bathtub, mildew probably has little to do with your milieu, or environment.
Vocabulary lists containing milieu
100 SAT Words Beginning with "M"
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
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A Walk in the Woods
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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.
See Examples For:
When they escape from their captor, Jack is overwhelmed by the vastness and unfamiliarity of the milieu surrounding him.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 10, 2026
Mr. Harris grew up in a small town in Mississippi, in a milieu rich with gruesome stories.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 29, 2026
The portraits play off the novel’s milieu: a series of churches, as well as the medieval French castle that is home to an eccentric and mostly absent prince.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 22, 2026
"By asking why LNPs perform so differently in the physiological milieu of the body, we found a surprisingly simple answer that could make a wide range of mRNA and gene editing therapies substantially more effective."
From Science Daily ● Apr. 20, 2026
Another thing that awed me was their almost total lack of information outside their milieu.
From "Kaffir Boy: An Autobiography" by Mark Mathabane
As so often in Hitchcock’s work, the choice of milieus determines the suspense and the moral significance.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 10, 2026
Few milieus could be as seductively dramatic as that Chinese city in the 1930s, with its cosmopolitan glamour and wartime danger.
From New York Times ● Mar. 1, 2024
The prototypical form is the internet meme, often used in modern conspiracy milieus.
From Salon ● Oct. 21, 2023
Her writing and exploits took her through the worlds of L.A. literature, art, film and music, milieus she described indelibly and influenced deeply.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 23, 2021
Oppenheimer recognized that their social milieus were fated to remain distinct.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
Forests, for example, release a complex chemical milieux into the air.
From Science Daily ● May 15, 2024
These scientific milieux shaped their inquiries and practices, and enabled them to contest and advance knowledge.
From Nature ● Sep. 16, 2019
The remake runs twenty minutes longer than the original—twenty minutes that detail Priest’s audacious maneuverings and their grim effects in milieux left unexplored by the earlier film.
From The New Yorker ● Jun. 15, 2018
From the mucousy milieux of Alien's xenomorphs to the synthetic, sentient puddle of Terminator 2's T-1000, there was something especially slimy running straight through the 1980s.
From The Verge ● Aug. 23, 2017
Young Hitchcock had returned recently to the family lumber yards on the West Side and the family residence on Michigan Avenue, with about equal disgust, so Sommers judged, for both milieux.
From The Web of Life by Robert Herrick
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.
