# suburb

Pronunciation: say "SUB-urb" US /ˈsʌbɝb/, UK /ˈsʌbɜːb/

## Noun

1. A residential area on the edge of a city or large town, usually with its own schools, stores, and other businesses serving the people who live there.
   - Simple: A town area just outside a big city, where people live and also shop nearby.
   - _After years downtown, the family settled in a leafy suburb with good schools._
   - _New shopping centers sprang up across the suburbs as more people moved out of the city._
2. In British usage, any subdivision of a large urban area, not necessarily on its outer edge. *(Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, UK)*
   - Simple: In British English, any district of a large built-up area, even one near the center.
   - _The address falls within a central suburb, despite being minutes from the main railway station._
   - _Planners divided the conurbation into dozens of named suburbs for administrative purposes._
3. The outer part of something; the surrounding area or environs.
   - Simple: The outer edge of something, or the area all around it.
   - _His thoughts wandered to the shadowy suburb of memory, where old faces blurred together._
   - _Wildflowers grew thick in the suburbs of the meadow, where forest met open ground._

## Origin

Borrowed through Old French suburbe from Latin suburbium, which combines sub- with urbs ("city"). It displaced the native Old English underburg, literally "under-city".

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