# infrastructure

Pronunciation: US say "IN-fruh-struk-chur" /ˈɪnfɹəˌstɹʌkt͡ʃɚ/; say "IN-fruh-struk-chuh" UK /ˈɪnfɹəˌstɹʌkt͡ʃə/, AUS /ˈɪnfɹəˌstɹɐkt͡ʃə/

## Noun

1. The facilities, services, and installations a community or society needs in order to function.
   - Simple: The basic systems a place needs to work, like roads, water pipes, and power lines.
   - _Decades of neglect left the city's infrastructure crumbling._
   - _Aid agencies rebuilt basic infrastructure before tackling longer-term development projects._
2. The underlying base or foundation that supports a building, organization, or system.
   - Simple: The base that something is built on, holding up a building, group, or system.
   - _The organization's entire infrastructure rested on a handful of overworked volunteers._
   - _Without a sound technical infrastructure, the platform could not scale to millions of users._

## Origin

Borrowed from French infrastructure, formed from the prefix infra- combined with structure.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/infrastructure (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).