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 November 4, Elisabeth Vincentelli, “You Are What Your Name Says You Are”, in New York Times‎^[1]:

     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

From Old French banlieue, from Medieval Latin banleuca, bannileuga, from ban +‎ lieue (“league, mile”). Compare Middle High German banmile, modern German Bannmeile.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bɑ̃.ljø/

• Audio:

  (file)

Noun

banlieue f (plural banlieues)

1. suburb

Further reading

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