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.
Firefighters were also busy battling the Bryson fire, which broke out overnight on the outskirts of the famed Malibu beach community.
From Barron's ● Oct. 17, 2026
A fast-moving wildfire burning near homes in the outskirts of Santa Clarita prompted evacuation orders Sunday afternoon as both L.A.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 11, 2026
The company built 18 studios inside a five-story building on the outskirts of Shanghai.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 10, 2026
Some of Kyiv's most vulnerable citizens – the elderly and women with young children – are being offered places in converted sanatoriums and rehabilitation centres in the city's forested outskirts.
From BBC ● Oct. 9, 2026
The cart driver roused us when we reached the outskirts of the city where my son worked.
From "Nectar in a Sieve" by Kamala Markandaya
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
