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.
Fighting appears to have stopped for the moment in Gao, another northern town, with rebels positioned on the outskirts.
From Barron's • Apr. 26, 2026
The jet fuel is dispatched by pipeline to Charles de Gaulle airport on the outskirts of Paris, while motor fuels are dispatched to fuel depots for the capital region.
From Barron's • Apr. 26, 2026
He moved into a rented home in a quiet neighborhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires where he was supposed to receive round-the-clock home care.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 16, 2026
Many are migrant workers, living hand-to-mouth in cramped housing on the city's outskirts.
From BBC • Apr. 16, 2026
We passed through the outskirts of Norfolk, and the people of that town surveyed our bedraggled carnage with a gray, defeated mien.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson
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.
