banlieue

B3A1N1L1I1E1U1E1

noun

The outskirts of a city, especially in France, inhabited chiefly by poor people living in tenement-style housing.

UncommonScrabble 10

Meanings

nounbanlieue (plural banlieues)

plural banlieues

  1. The outskirts of a city, especially in France, inhabited chiefly by poor people living in tenement-style housing.

    […] 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 February 11, Uzodinma Iweala, “Colonial Castoff”, in New York Times
    1 more example

    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.

    2007 November 4, Elisabeth Vincentelli, “You Are What Your Name Says You Are”, in New York Times

Origin

  1. Frenchbanlieue
  2. Frenchbanlieue
  3. Englishbanlieue

Borrowed from French banlieue.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

banlieue. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/banlieue

MLA

“banlieue.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/banlieue. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “banlieue,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/banlieue.

Source: banlieue on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.