urban
- 1Relating to, characteristic of, or located in a city or town, including its people and government, especially as contrasted with the countryside.
Urban planners must balance housing density against the need for green space.
The region's urban centers expanded rapidly during the industrial boom.
UsageUsually before a noun: urban areas, urban life. Urbane, a different word, means polished and polite.
Similarmetropolitan
- 2Of or connected with present-day African American culture, particularly its music.
The station switched to an urban format, playing mostly hip-hop and R&B.
She topped the urban charts three years running.
UsageStill seen in urban radio and urban charts, but now widely avoided: name the genre, such as hip-hop or R&B.
Note
A late twentieth-century American music-industry label for styles rooted in contemporary African American culture. It is now outdated and widely discouraged, partly because it shades into the coded racial euphemism.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- The American music-industry label dates from the late twentieth century and refers to music associated with African American culture. en.wikipedia.org
- 3An offensive euphemism describing an inhabitant or resident as Black or African American.
UsageAvoid it. If race matters, say Black or African American.
Note
Here race is disguised as geography. The word lets a speaker refer to Black people while appearing to talk only about where they live. That deniability is what makes it offensive in both American and British use. It looks identical to the city meaning, so listeners judge it by who is being described and why.
Practice
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Origin
English borrowed the word either from urbain, a Middle French word meaning "refined, belonging to a city," or straight from that word's Latin source, urbānus, meaning "polished, refined, of or belonging to a city," adding the English suffix -an. Urbānus is built on urbs ("city, walled town, Rome"), and the further origin of urbs is uncertain, possibly a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to encircle or enclose." New York radio DJ Frankie Crocker coined the euphemistic sense for Black music during the early to mid-1970s.