Barrio
name, noun, slang ·3 syllables ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A municipality or subdivision of a municipality in Spanish America, and in Spain itself.
- 2 an urban area in a Spanish-speaking country wordnet
- 3 A slum on the periphery of a major city, or a low to middle-class neighborhood in a lesser city, in Venezuela or the Dominican Republic.
- 4 a Spanish-speaking quarter in a town or city (especially in the United States) wordnet
- 5 A rural barangay or neighborhood. Philippines
"In the barrio, they talked excitedly about the wood-gatherer's discovery. There was so much pushing and quibbling over details that by the time the barrio had organized itself to set out for Salug to investigate, dusk had already fallen."
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- 6 An area or neighborhood in a US city inhabited predominantly by Spanish-speakers or people of Hispanic origin. US, informal
"After World War II, its prospering working-class white residents moved to other, more upscale suburban developments, and by the 1950s the area had become an isolated ethnic enclave with its own barrio gang."
- 1 A surname from Spanish.
Example
More examples"New York City's premiere Latino art museum, El Museo del Barrio, is now host to a world-touring exhibition of 20th Century Mexican Art."
Etymology
Borrowed from Spanish barrio, from Arabic بَرِّيّ (barriyy, “wild”).
Borrowed from Spanish Barrio.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.