Suburban

How to spell suburban

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce suburban

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does suburban mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to or characteristic of a suburb, the mainly residential area on the outskirts of a city.

Suburban in a sentence

• The family moved from a cramped flat to a quiet suburban street.

• The new shopping centre serves several suburban neighbourhoods nearby.

Where does suburban come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin suburbanus, which described something lying just outside or near the city. It was built from the prefix sub-, here meaning 'near to' or 'close by' rather than its more usual sense of 'under', combined with urbs, the Latin word for a city or walled town. The same urbs root gives us 'urban', 'urbane', and even 'conurbation', all sharing the idea of city life. English adopted suburban in the early 1600s, at first to describe the districts and dwellings ringing a town, and over the centuries it gathered the modern flavour of comfortable, residential commuter areas. The spelling trap lies in the unstressed middle: the 'urb' is easy to slur in speech, but remembering the city root urbs keeps the b and the single r in their proper place.

How the word is built

• sub- (near, just outside)
• urb (from Latin urbs: city)
• -an (adjective suffix meaning 'relating to')