outskirts
Britishplural noun
Explanation
Some people like to live downtown. Others prefer the open spaces of the suburbs. But if you live in between the two, you are in the outskirts, the place where the city ends and the suburbs begin. Outskirts describes the outer edge of a city or town, farthest from the center but still technically part of that place. If you had a city map, you could draw a line on all sides where crowded streets filled with apartment buildings and businesses begin to give way to single-family houses and country roads. You might not get a perfect circle but you will see that outskirts are those border places between the city and the little towns that surround it.
Vocabulary lists containing outskirts
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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.
Police say a 73-year-old man was seriously injured after being attacked on Sunday while he was inside the animal's enclosure, located in a privately-owned facility on the outskirts of the German city of Leipzig.
From BBC • May 18, 2026
On Wednesday, several dozen people, some banging pots and pans, protested against power outages in the San Miguel del Padron neighborhood on Havana's outskirts, a resident told AFP.
From Barron's • May 14, 2026
And then there’s a group of folks on the outskirts that are just hanging out because their pals are there, and so someone’s going to come in with an in-joke or a snappy line.
From Salon • May 12, 2026
And it is fascinating to observe that Handel’s oratorio and Melville’s novel, two works of immense popularity that are among the greatest works of their genres, both function on the outskirts of narrative.
From Los Angeles Times • May 11, 2026
Big Creek High School sat on the outskirts of War beside the river that gave the district its name.
From "October Sky" by Homer Hickam
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.
