ghetto

Borrowed from the name of the Venetian Ghetto, whose etymology and original source language is uncertain.[1] Compare Italian ghetto.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈɡɛtəʊ/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈɡɛtoʊ/, [ˈɡɛɾoʊ̯]

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛtəʊ

ghetto (plural ghettos or ghettoes or ghetti)

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, 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.

   • 2010, Mike Lindner, Leaving Terror Behind: A Boy's Journey to Painting Over the Past, →ISBN, page 49:

     […] concentrating the Jewish community into ghettoes. The Germans not only started the ghettoes, but they had also opened a concentration camp […]

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:ghetto.
2. An (often impoverished) area of a city inhabited predominantly by members of a specific nationality, ethnicity, or race.
   • 1998, Steven J. L. Taylor, Desegregation in Boston and Buffalo: The Influence of Local Leaders, →ISBN, page 15:

     Charlestown would also become one of Boston's three large Irish ghettoes.

   • 1998, Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960, →ISBN, page 253:

     By 1960 the growth and development of Chicago's black areas of residence confirmed the existence of the city's second ghetto.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:ghetto.
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, 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, 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, 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, […]

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:ghetto.
4. (figurative, sometimes derogatory) An isolated, self-contained, segregated subsection, area or field of interest; often of minority or specialist interest.
   • 1983, Eric S. Rabkin, Science Fiction: A Historical Anthology, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 249:

     Abraham Merritt wrote for the pulps and never in his lifetime achieved critical success. Yet he had a devoted following in the science fiction ghetto who admired the clarity of his style and his power to evoke moods.

   • 2012, Andrew Blum, Tubes: Behind the Scenes at the Internet, →ISBN:

     Invent is undoubtedly the wrong word, but the push from government was crucial in getting the Internet out of its academic ghetto.

   • 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.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:ghetto.

• (often impoverished area of a city): see Thesaurus:slum
• (figurative): ivory tower (academic ghetto)

ghetto (comparative more ghetto, superlative most ghetto)

1. Of or relating to a ghetto or to ghettos in general.
   • 2012, Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow, →ISBN, page 50:

     Those residing in ghetto communities were particularly ill equipped to adapt to the seismic changes taking place in the U.S. economy; they were left isolated and jobless.

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!

   • 2005, Ramon Carrasco, Army Life: The First Four Months in My First Duty Station‎, page 15:

     I had not used very many minutes on my phone. Here we pay for our minutes prior to using them, and it gets expensive. I did not want her using up all my minutes. That was very ghetto and disrespectful.

   • 2007, Cora Daniels, Ghettonation: A Journey Into the Land of Bling and Home of the Shameless‎, page 11:

     In some kind of warped hometown loyalty, sometime during the conversation folks would stake their claim to owning the bottom. Philly is more ghetto than D.C. Or is it that DC. is more ghetto than Philly? Or Dallas (LA) is more ghetto than LA.

   • 2010, Deborah J. Hultin, WaitStress‎, page 115:

     One guest did not pay. One of my checks remained open. They bolted and hit the service door. A walkout. Very ghetto.

   • 2011, Taylor Goetz, 169 Pages Of My Life‎, page 61:

     It was like an awesome trip walking though the old house on Douglas, a lot had changed and my dad had it looking more ghetto than ever. He had a dog that he was watching while a buddy of his was in prison. It was a female Rottweiler

3. (US, informal, often derogatory or offensive) Characteristic of the style, speech, or behavior of residents of a predominantly black or other ghetto in the United States.
   • 2002, Russell Simmons, Life and Def: Sex, Drugs, Money, + God‎, page 26:

     The music I liked was very ghetto and gritty. It was the stuff that didn't really cross over much, but spoke to a roots black experience. People don't understand this now, but the falsetto, crying singers were the most ghetto back then.

   • 2007, S. L. Mitchell, Gypsy's Crossing‎:

     You're the one that grew up in the suburbs and you act way more ghetto than I do.” “I am not ghetto.” Val said in an English accent and broke out laughing.

   • 2005, Chester Kelly Robinson, The Strong Silent Type‎:

     I beat up my kid's principal. Can you get any more ghetto than that?

   • 2008, Mark Anthony, “So Seductive”, in Around the Way Girls 5‎, page 244:

     He wasn't lying because, truth be told, I looked a lot like Halle Berry, only I was much thicker in all the right places and I was way more ghetto than Halle. And I had the tattoos and the attitude to match.

   • 2010, Timothy Black, When a Heart Turns Rock Solid: The Lives of Three Puerto Rican Brothers On and Off the Streets‎, page 93:

     Oh yeah, we played the whole thing, I mean we was acting more ghetto than what we was. We was talking slangs and giving dabs every time we said so

   • 2010, T. S. Weatherspoon, The Promise‎, page 20:

     Kesha rang us up, and instructed another girl in the back to add extra food to the bag. "Your girl is kinda ghetto ain't she?" I asked when we left the store. "No more ghetto than anyone else around here" he replied,

4. Having been raised in a ghetto in the United States.

• boughetto
• nonghetto

ghetto (third-person singular simple present ghettoes, present participle ghettoing, simple past and past participle ghettoed)

1. To confine (a specified group of people) to a ghetto.
   • 1964, James A. Atkins, The age of Jim Crow, page 274:

     This is, in brief, a part of the story of the ghettoing of a large segment of Denver's Negro population.

   • 2001, Paul Johnson, Modern Times Revised Edition: World from the Twenties to the Nineties, →ISBN, page 526:

     All African states practised racist policies. In the 1950s and 1960s, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia expelled more than a quarter of a million Jews and ghettoed the few thousand who remained. In the 1960s the United Republic of Tanzania expelled its Arabs or deprived them of equal rights.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:ghetto.

Borrowed from Italian ghetto.

• IPA^(key): [ˈɡɛto]
• Hyphenation: ghe‧t‧to

ghetto n

1. ghetto (the district in a city where Jews were compelled to confine themselves)

ghetto n (plural ghetto's, diminutive ghettootje n)

1. Nonstandard spelling of getto.

• IPA^(key): /ˈɡetːo/, [ˈɡe̞t̪ːo̞]

ghetto

1. Alternative spelling of getto

• “ghetto”, in Kielitoimiston sanakirja [Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish]‎ (in Finnish) (online dictionary, continuously updated), Kotimaisten kielten keskuksen verkkojulkaisuja 35, Helsinki: Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland), 2004–, retrieved 2023-07-02

• ghetot

Borrowed from Italian ghetto.

• IPA^(key): /ɡɛ.to/, /ɡe.to/

• Audio

  (file)

ghetto m (plural ghettos or ghetti)

1. ghetto

• ghettoïsation
• ghettoïser
• ghettoïque

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

Borrowed from Venetian ghèto (“foundry”). Alternatively a clipping of borghetto, diminutive of borgo (“village”). Initially used of the areas Jews were concentrated, later extended to concentrations of other ethnicities and then non-ethnic groups.

• IPA^(key): /ˈɡet.to/
• Rhymes: -etto
• Hyphenation: ghét‧to

ghetto m (plural ghetti)

1. ghetto

• ghettizzare

• → English: ghetto
• → French: ghetto

• ghetto in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana

ghetto m (plural ghettos)

1. Alternative spelling of gueto

• getto

From Italian ghetto.

ghetto n

1. ghetto

Style guides recommend the variant spelling getto over ghetto.

• ghetto in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)
• ghetto in Svensk ordbok (SO)