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.
Because the Design District has no residences and is mostly retail, the census data relies only on residential data from the outskirts of the tract.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 2, 2026
At a community event at a co-living space on the outskirts of Dali’s old town, I met people trying to figure out their next steps.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 1, 2026
Not far from the cyclist's starting point, a black Volvo XC90 was already catching the attention of other drivers as it sped "erratically" along the semi-rural roads on the outskirts of Trafford and north-east Cheshire.
From BBC ● Oct. 30, 2026
At the Paris protest on Saturday, a row of police in riot gear led the crowd along the authorized route down boulevards on the city’s outskirts.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 28, 2026
An hour later, they reached the outskirts of Hurlock, a dusty, sprawly little town, with one stoplight at its center.
From "Homecoming" by Cynthia Voigt
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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.
