faubourg

English

WOTD – 13 May 2011

Etymology

Borrowed from French faubourg.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈfəʊbʊəɡ/ (or as French, below)

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

Noun

faubourg (plural faubourgs)

1. An outlying part of a city or town, beyond the walls; a suburb, especially of Paris.
   • 1919, Christopher Morley, The Haunted Bookshop‎^[1], New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers, →OCLC, page 217:

     […] in the course of his walk (which led him out toward the faubourgs of Flatbush) he passed long vistas of signboards […]

   • 1973, Kyril Bonfiglioli, Don't Point That Thing at Me., Penguin, published 2001, page 81:

     By the time that I was quite clear of the city's unlovely faubourgs and purlieus I needed petrol: the Silver Ghost is a lovely car but its best friend would have to admit that its m.'s per g. are few.

Translations

an outlying part of a city or town

• Bulgarian: предградие (bg) n (predgradie)
• Finnish: esikaupunki (fi)
• French:

  Middle French: fauxbourg m, forsbourg m

  Old French: forsborc m

• Galician: arrabalde
• Polish: przedmieście (pl) n
• Russian: предме́стье (ru) n (predméstʹje), при́город (ru) m (prígorod)
• Spanish: extramuros

French

Etymology

From Old French fors bourg (“settlement outside the ramparts”), from Old French fors (“outside”) + bourg (“town”). Alternatively it may be from faux-bourg ("false borough") which isn't attested until the 15th century (later than fors bourg) but is found in 1380 in Latin as falsus burgus. Possibly a corruption of Middle High German phâlburgere (“burghers of the pale”) (also spelt falborgere) as in a person living outside the city walls but inside the palisades. An 18th century French translation of an Old French charter of 1365 speaks of 'des faux bourgeois dits en allemand Pfalbourguers' which evidences the possibility it evolved from phalburgensis or a corrupt translation faux bourgeois.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fo.buʁ/

• Audio

  (file)

Noun

faubourg m (plural faubourgs)

1. suburb

Further reading

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