ghetto

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   formerly the restricted quarter of many European cities in which Jews were required to live

   the Warsaw ghetto

2. 2
   noun

   any segregated mode of living or working that results from bias or stereotyping

   the relative security of the gay ghetto

3. 3
   noun

   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.)

   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.

4. 4
   noun

   An (often impoverished) area of a city inhabited predominantly by members of a specific nationality, ethnicity, or race.

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

5. 5
   noun

   An area in which people who are distinguished by sharing something other than ethnicity concentrate or are concentrated.

   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.

6. 6
   noun

   An isolated, self-contained, segregated subsection, area or field of interest; often of minority or specialist interest.

   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.

7. 7
   adj

   Of or relating to a ghetto or to ghettos in general.

   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.

8. 8
   adj

   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!

Etymology

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