# urban

Pronunciation: say "UR-buhn" US /ˈɜɹbən/, UK /ˈɜːb(ə)n/

## Adjective

1. Relating to, characteristic of, or located in a city or town, including its people and government, especially as contrasted with the countryside.
   - Simple: Connected with a city or town, its people, or the officials who run it, rather than 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._
3. An offensive euphemism describing an inhabitant or resident as Black or African American.
   - Simple: An indirect and offensive way of saying that a person who lives somewhere is Black or African American.

## Adjective

2. Of or connected with present-day African American culture, particularly its music. *(dated, US)*
   - Simple: Used to describe things connected with African American culture today, especially music.
   - _The station switched to an urban format, playing mostly hip-hop and R&B._
   - _She topped the urban charts three years running._

## 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.

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