outskirts
Some people like to live downtown. Others prefer the open spaces of the suburbs. But if you live in between the two, you are in the outskirts, the place where the city ends and the suburbs begin.
Outskirts describes the outer edge of a city or town, farthest from the center but still technically part of that place. If you had a city map, you could draw a line on all sides where crowded streets filled with apartment buildings and businesses begin to give way to single-family houses and country roads. You might not get a perfect circle but you will see that outskirts are those border places between the city and the little towns that surround it.
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outlying areas (as of a city or town)“they lived on the outskirts of Houston”“they mingled in the outskirts of the crowd”type of:sectiona distinct region or subdivision of a territorial or political area or community or group of people
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Vocabulary lists containing outskirts
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While trying to track down her missing mother, thirteen-year-old Salamanca entertains her grandparents with strange stories about a girl named Phoebe Winterbottom.