- 1an area of a city where many people of the same race or background live, separately from the rest of the population. Ghettos are often crowded, with bad living conditions. a poor kid growing up in the ghetto The south coast of Spain has become something of a tourist ghetto. He tended to stick to the relative safety of San Francisco’s gay ghetto. They felt their beliefs made them outsiders, and had developed a ghetto mentality. kids from the ghetto Wordfindercityamenity, city, ghetto, high-rise, metropolitan, population, slum, suburb, town, urban
- 2the area of a town where Jews were forced to live in the past the Warsaw ghetto Word Originearly 17th cent.: perhaps from Italian getto ‘foundry’ (because the first ghetto was established in 1516 on the site of a foundry in Venice), or from Italian borghetto, diminutive of borgo ‘borough’.
ghetto
nounBrE BrE//ˈɡetəʊ//; NAmE NAmE//ˈɡetoʊ//
(pl. ghettos, ghettoes)Check pronunciation: ghetto
