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
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.
Several participants withdrew before the event got under way last September in a Moscow suburb.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 16, 2026
The apartment was in a modest suburb, and the Mengele family had the wealth for something much fancier.
From BBC • May 15, 2026
First, on Ogden Avenue in the Chicago suburb of Berwyn, there was the Cigars & Stripes Muffler Man.
From Los Angeles Times • May 12, 2026
Guillermo Ramos remembers seeing few elected leaders who looked like him while he was growing up in the 1980s in Farmers Branch, a fast-growing affluent suburb northwest of Dallas.
From Salon • May 7, 2026
It was here, in what Chicagoans called a “streetcar” suburb, that stockyard supervisors chose to settle, as did officials of companies headquartered in the skyscrapers of the Loop.
From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson
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.
