English
ghetto
Pronunciation
  • (RP) IPA: /ˈɡɛtəʊ/
  • (America) IPA: /ˈɡɛtoʊ/, [ˈɡɛɾoʊ̯]
Noun

ghetto (plural ghettos)

  1. 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.)
    • 2009, Barbara Engelking-Boni, Jacek Leociak, The Warsaw ghetto: a guide to the perished city ISBN 0300112343, page 25:
      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.
  2. An (often impoverished) area of a city inhabited predominantly by members of a specific nationality, ethnicity or race.
  3. An area in which people who are distinguished by sharing something other than ethnicity concentrate or are concentrated.
    • 2006, Gay tourism: culture and context (Gordon Waitt, Kevin Markwell, ISBN 0789016036, page 201:
      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.
    • 2007, Romania & Moldova (Robert Reid, Leif Pettersen, ISBN 1741044782, page 190:
      The student ghetto, southwest of the centre, is inside the triangle formed by [three streets] and is full of open-air bars, internet cafés, fast-food shops — and students.
    • 2001, Justin Taylor, ''The Gospel of Anarchy: A Novel ISBN 0061881821, page 64:
      They're back in the student ghetto now, on oak-shaded streets lined with run-down houses filled with nonnuclear families of all varieties and kinds. Safe now from the tractor beams of the horrible good Christians, […]
  4. (figurative, sometimes pejorative) An isolated, self-contained, segregated subsection, area or field of interest; often of minority or specialist interest.
    • 2016 January 10, Quentin Tarantino, 73rd Golden Globe Awards
      Ennio Morricone... is my favourite composer - and when I say favourite composer, I don't mean movie composer - that ghetto. I'm talking about Mozart, I'm talking about Beethoven, I'm talking about Schubert. That's who I'm talking about.
Synonyms Translations Translations Adjective

ghetto

  1. Of or relating to a ghetto or to ghettos in general.
  2. (slang, informal) Unseemly and indecorous or of low quality; cheap; shabby, crude.
    My apartment's so ghetto, the rats and cockroaches filed a complaint with the city!
    I like to drive ghetto cars; if they break down you can just abandon them and pick up a new one!
  3. (US, informal) Characteristic of the style, speech, or behavior of residents of a predominantly black or other ghetto in the United States.
  4. Having been raised in a ghetto in the United States.
Translations
  • Portuguese: favelado
Verb

ghetto (ghettoes, present participle ghettoing; past and past participle ghettoed)

  1. To confine (a specified group of people) to a ghetto.
Translations
  • German: gettoisieren


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