urban
adjective
Simple meaning
Living in a city or town.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
urbuhnSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈɝbən
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
Living in a city or town.
Located in or characteristic of a city or city life
Having authority or jurisdiction over a city or town.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A2 · Elementary
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Living in a city or town.
Used this way, urban is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Nearby words
- citified , rarer, so it draws attention
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use urban
- “Living in an urban area means there are many shops and restaurants nearby.”adjective
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A geographical area constituting a city or town.
A large and densely populated urban area.
A guerrilla who fights only in cities and towns.
A story that appears mysteriously and spreads spontaneously in various forms and is usually false.
The branch of architecture dealing with the design and organization of urban space and activities.
The clearing and rebuilding and redevelopment of urban slums.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: living in a city or town
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.