ghetto
/ˈɡɛ.toʊ/
Frequency: 3.69 in modern English
Meaning
noun
An (often walled) area of a city in which Jews are concentrated by force and law. (Used particularly of areas in medieval Italy and in Nazi-controlled Europe.)
noun
An (often impoverished) area of a city inhabited predominantly by members of a specific nationality, ethnicity, or race.
noun
An area in which people who are distinguished by sharing something other than ethnicity concentrate or are concentrated.
noun
An isolated, self-contained, segregated subsection, area or field of interest; often of minority or specialist interest.
Derogatory
adj
Of or relating to a ghetto or to ghettos in general.
adj
Characteristic of the style, speech, or behavior of residents of a predominantly black or other ghetto in the United States.
American usage; Derogatory; Informal; Offensive
adj
Having been raised in a ghetto in the United States.
Example Sentences
- "The Venetian ghetto, according to Sennett, was to provide protection from the unclean bodies of the Jews and their sullying touch. The Roman ghetto, on the other hand, was planned as an area for mission. It was supposed to collect the Jews in one place, so that it would be easier to convert them."
- "[…] concentrating the Jewish community into ghettoes. The Germans not only started the ghettoes, but they had also opened a concentration camp […]"
- "Established by the Germans in October 1940, the Warsaw Ghetto was the largest Jewish ghetto in German-occupied Europe."
- "Charlestown would also become one of Boston's three large Irish ghettoes."
- "By 1960 the growth and development of Chicago's black areas of residence confirmed the existence of the city's second ghetto."
- "Counterhegemonic spaces imagined as bounded territories ensure that heteronormativity is fixed beyond the borders of the gay ghetto. The rural and suburban lives of lesbian and gay people are made invisible and signified as inauthentic."
Etymology
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈɡɛ.toʊ/
- British English: /ˈɡɛ.təʊ/
Usage
- Derogatory
- Informal
- Slang
- American usage
- Offensive
- Transitive verb