outskirts

The outskirts of a place are its outer parts, the edges where a city, town, or village begins to thin out into open land, smaller roads, or quieter neighborhoods.

If you live on the outskirts of town, you are not exactly in the busy center, but you are still close enough to belong to the place. The word often suggests distance from the main activity: a factory might stand on the outskirts of a city, a family might buy a house on the outskirts for more space, or a traveler might find a small inn just beyond the crowded streets. Outskirts is usually plural, and it commonly appears in the phrase "on the outskirts."

Outskirts means the outer areas of a city, town, village, or other settled place. These are the parts near the edge, away from the center. For example: "They lived on the outskirts of London," means they lived near the outside edge of the city rather than downtown.

The word often carries a feeling of transition. The outskirts are where city streets may give way to fields, warehouses, highways, suburbs, industrial areas, or quieter residential neighborhoods. A person might move to the outskirts for lower rent, more space, or a slower pace, while still staying connected to the city.

Outskirts can also suggest being removed from the main action. If a concert is held on the outskirts of town, it may take extra travel to get there. If a traveler reaches the outskirts of a village at sunset, the image is of someone arriving at the edge before entering the heart of the place.

Although outskirts most often refers to geography, it can occasionally be used in a figurative way. Someone might talk about living on the outskirts of a community, a profession, or a social circle, meaning they are near it but not fully included in its center.

The word is almost always used in the plural: people say "the outskirts," not usually "an outskirt" in everyday English. It is also most natural with the preposition on, as in "on the outskirts of the city."

So whether you are describing the edge of a town, a quiet suburb beyond the traffic, or a figurative place just outside the center of attention, outskirts points to the margins of a place or group--close enough to be connected, but not quite at the core.