neighborhood
Pluralneighborhoods
UK spellingneighbourhood
- 1The residential area surrounding one's home, including the nearby streets and houses.
The neighborhood has changed a lot since the new families arrived.
She grew up in a working-class neighborhood on the city's east side.
Similararea, district, community, locality
Note
The everyday sense owes its form to a suffix swap. Middle English neȝeburredde was neighbor + -red, and speakers reread the ending as -hood, as in brotherhood; Scots keeps the cognate nichbourheid. Neighborhood is the American spelling of what British English writes neighbourhood. The word often takes a possessive (in my neighborhood) or is followed by a relative clause (a neighborhood where I used to teach).
- 2
- 3
- 4The quality or state of being physically near to something.
The neighborhood of the factory affected air quality across several blocks.
Builders worried about the neighborhood of the new tower to the unstable cliff.
Similarproximity, nearness, closeness
Oppositedistance, remoteness
Note
Nearness as a quality two things share, not a place you can walk to. Notice the construction in the slums and the palace were in awful neighborhood. It uses no article, only an adjective after in, which treats closeness as a condition. A modern writer would usually say proximity, or that the slums lay awfully close to the palace.
- 5An approximate figure or amount, typically used in the phrase "in the neighborhood of."
The company posted profits in the neighborhood of three million for the quarter.
Their offer came in somewhere in the neighborhood of the asking price.
Note
A hedge for figures, borrowed from the map. In the neighborhood of $200,000 places a number the way the street sense places a house: close, not exact. It lives almost entirely in that one phrase and is followed by a sum or quantity. Around and roughly do the same job more briefly, and the longer phrase softens a guess.
- 6The condition of being a neighbor or of living near one another; proximity.
Then the prison and the palace were in awful neighbourhood.
1835, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, RienziNor content with such / Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart / Of Solomon he led by fraud to build / His Temple right against the Temple of God.
1667, John Milton, Paradise LostNote
Here the nearness is a bond between people who live side by side. George Peele's The Old Wives' Tale (1595) pairs it with kinship: "if for neighborhood or brotherhood, helpe me". Brotherhood is the same suffix model behind the everyday sense. Milton's "audacious neighbourhood" in Paradise Lost (1667) makes nearness a provocation. The sense is obsolete now. Proximity or living nearby says it without the archaic ring.
- 7The kindness or good will befitting a neighbor; neighborly friendliness.
Note
Nearness turned into a virtue: the good will a neighbor owes the people next door. The sense is obsolete. Modern English says neighborly kindness or good will instead, and the adjective neighborly is its closest living relative. It grew out of living side by side, where obligation was already in view.
- 8In topology, a set that contains an open set which in turn contains a given point.
- 9In a metric space, a set that contains an open ball which contains a given point.
- 10In graph theory, the set of all vertices adjacent to a given vertex.
- 11In cellular automata, the set of cells near a given cell that determine its state in the next generation.
- 12In topology, the infinitesimal open set of all points reachable directly from a given point.
- 13In topology, an open set containing a given point, under the alternative convention that requires the neighborhood itself to be open.
- 14In a metric space, an open ball containing a given point, under the alternative convention identifying a neighborhood with that ball.
Practice
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Origin
An alteration of the earlier 'neighborred' (from Middle English 'neȝeburredde'), originally 'neighbor' plus '-red', which was later reinterpreted as 'neighbor' plus '-hood' (compare the suffix change in 'brotherhood'). It is cognate with Scots 'nichbourheid' and comparable to Dutch 'naburigheid'.