suburb

Etymology

It is borrowed from Anglo-Norman suburbe,^[2][3][4][5] and also directly from Latin suburbium (“an outlying part of a city”),^[2][6][7] from sub (“below, near”) and urbs (“city”).^[4][8][9] In Anglo-Norman the word is recorded from the later 13th century, for a district outside a city wall.^[3][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the plural, the area just outside the walls or boundaries of a town or city: c. 1350, in a Psalter.^[2] Barnhart dates suburbe to before 1325, and Etymonline to the early 14th century.^[5][4]

Semantic evolution

A single district outside a city, a suburb, is recorded from a1387, in Trevisa.^[2] From c. 1384, in the Wycliffite Bible, the word was also used of the outlying parts or confines of anything, and later (1568) of the margins of something immaterial.^[2] In 16th- and 17th-century London the suburbs outside the City were home to playhouses, brothels and smelly trades, so suburb and the later suburbian could mean loose or riotous;^[10][6][11] Weekley notes that the disparaging sense of suburban, narrow and middle-class, goes back to Byron's Beppo and contrasts curiously with that older meaning.^[11] Johnson (1755) defined the word as the buildings outside the walls of a city.^[12] The suburbs that now lie within a city's boundaries and are mainly residential are a later development of the same sense.^[2][7]

Timeline

• before 1325 – suburbe, area outside a town.^[5]
• c. 1350 – suburbs, the area outside a town's walls.^[2]
• c. 1384 – the outlying parts of any place.^[2]
• a1387 – a single district outside a city.^[2]
• 1568 – the margins of something immaterial.^[2]
• 1813 – the area just outside a large building or estate.^[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A mainly residential district on the outskirts of a city or town: They moved to a quiet suburb north of the river.
2. the suburbs: the residential areas around a city as a whole.
3. (archaic) The outlying part of any place; its outskirts.

Word family

• suburban
• suburbanite
• suburbed
• suburbia

Related words

• urban
• urbane

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
4. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ a b Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ a b Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
11. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.