banlieue

English

A French banlieue

Etymology

Borrowed from French banlieue.

Noun

banlieue (plural banlieues)

1. The outskirts of a city, especially in France, inhabited chiefly by poor people living in tenement-style housing.
   • 2007 February 11, Uzodinma Iweala, “Colonial Castoff”, in New York Times‎^[1]:

     […] her novel illuminates the general situation facing all children of postcolonial immigrants across the West, from the banlieue of France to the Islamic neighborhoods of New York to the Hispanic ghettos of Los Angeles.

   • 2007 November 4, Elisabeth Vincentelli, “You Are What Your Name Says You Are”, in New York Times‎^[2]:

     But Guy Desplanques, a demographer, pointed out in 2002 that names like Ahmed and Jamila actually were on the wane, and that second-generation French men and women work toward integration by coming up with variations like Yanis or Rayan; the latter has become popular in some banlieues, evoking both the Maghreb and the relatively widespread Ryan.

See also

• banlieue on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

French

Etymology

Inherited from Old French banlieue, from Medieval Latin banleuca. Compare Middle High German banmile, modern German Bannmeile.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bɑ̃.ljø/

• Audio:

  (file)

Noun

banlieue f (plural banlieues)

1. suburb

Descendants

• → English: banlieue
• → Turkish: banliyö

Further reading

• banlieue on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “banlieue”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.