suburb
Americannoun
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a district lying immediately outside a city or town, especially a smaller residential community.
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the suburbs, the area composed of such districts.
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an outlying part.
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of suburb
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English, from Latin suburbium, from sub- sub- + urb(s) “city” + -ium -ium
Explanation
A suburb is a residential district located on the outskirts of a city. If you live in the suburbs, you probably travel to the city for work. Suburb comes from Latin: sub means "below or near" and urbis means "city." You also will recognize this root in urban. Suburbs have more single-family homes than apartment buildings, and living there, you are more likely to have a yard with trees and grass. The downside is, if you work in the city, you might have a long commute that adds to the time you are away from your family.
Vocabulary lists containing suburb
Latin Root "sub" Words
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"The Civil Rights Movement"
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The United States
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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:
The last search on his phone was for a bike shop in a nearby suburb, Hall said, where the owner recalled Kirchner saying only that he was “headed north.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 12, 2026
Police in South Africa said they had opened an investigation after the body of a 25-year-old man was found at a house in Schotschekloof, a suburb in central Cape Town, on Saturday morning.
From BBC ● Jul. 11, 2026
Elsewhere, new listings of luxury homes rose the most year over year in the Detroit suburb of Warren, Mich., followed by Columbus, Ohio.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 9, 2026
In the Portland suburb of Gresham, federal rules cap a two-bedroom apartment built with the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit at $1,675 a month.
From Salon ● Jul. 4, 2026
But my colleagues and, later, my wife argued that for security reasons I should stay with Archbishop Desmond Tutu in Bishop’s Court, a plush residence in a white suburb.
From "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela
Since 1998, the Pegulas have also owned a property in the suburbs of Pittsburgh.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 13, 2026
The grandmother in the spotlight, a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker named Renee, exposes Joshua to the joys of the Big City when he visits from the suburbs.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 8, 2026
Whether you were in France, the Sahara Desert or Chile, the sky "would no longer be clear, resembling instead the sky seen in the suburbs of a city," he warned.
From Barron's ● Jul. 1, 2026
In road trip news, Dolly Parton opened Dolly’s Tennessean Travel Stop in Cornersville, Tenn., and Arizona got its first Buc-ees, in the Phoenix suburbs.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 26, 2026
Crime was rising, and newer suburbs farther from town were roomier and less diverse.
From "Outcasts United: An American Town, a Refugee Team, and One Woman's Quest to Make a Difference" by Warren St. John
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.
