different between neighborhood vs backstreet

English

Alternative forms

• neighbourhood (UK)

Etymology

From an alteration of earlier neighborred (“neighborhood”), from Middle English ne?eburredde, neheborreden, equivalent to neighbor +? -red; the alteration being interpreted as though from neighbor +? -hood. For change in suffix (-red to -hood), compare brotherhood.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?ne?b?.h?d/
• (US) IPA^(key): /?ne?b??h?d/

Noun

neighborhood (countable and uncountable, plural neighborhoods) (American spelling)

1. (chiefly obsolete) The quality of being a neighbor, of living nearby, next to each-other; proximity.

   Our neighborhood was our only reason to exchange hollow greetings.

   • 1595, George Peele, The Old Wives’ Tale, The Malone Society Reprints, 1908, lines 243-245,^[1]

     […] if you do any thing for charity, helpe me; if for neighborhood or brotherhood, helpe me […]

   • c. 1599, William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act V, Scene 2,^[2]

     Take her, fair son, and from her blood raise up

     Issue to me; that the contending kingdoms

     Of France and England, whose very shores look pale

     With envy of each other’s happiness,

     May cease their hatred; and this dear conjunction

     Plant neighbourhood and Christian-like accord

     In their sweet bosoms […]

   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 1, ll. 399-402:

     Nor content with such / Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart / Of Solomon he led by fraud to build / His Temple right against the Temple of God.

   • 1835, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Rienzi, the Last of the Roman Tribunes:

     Then the prison and the palace were in awful neighbourhood.

2. (dated) Close proximity; nearness.
   • 1853, Charles Boner, Chamois Hunting in the Mountains of Bavaria (page 286)

     At first he was partly hidden among the latschen, then his hind-quarters, quite black, emerged from the dark green bushes, as he slowly moved on, perfectly unconscious of our neighbourhood.

3. The residential area near one's home.

   He lives in my neighborhood.

4. The inhabitants of a residential area.

   The fire alarmed the neighborhood.

5. A formal or informal division of a municipality or region.

   We have just moved to a pleasant neighborhood.

6. An approximate amount.

   He must be making in the neighborhood of $200,000 per year.

7. The quality of physical proximity.

   The slums and the palace were in awful neighborhood.

8. (obsolete) The disposition becoming a neighbor; neighborly kindness or good will.
9. (topology) Within a topological space:
   1. A set containing an open set which contains some specified point.
   2. Alternatively: An open set which contains some specified point.
10. (topology) Within a metric space:
    1. A set containing an open ball which contains a specified point.
    2. Alternatively: An open ball which contains some specified point.
11. (topology) The infinitesimal open set of all points that may be reached directly from a given point.
12. (graph theory) The set of all the vertices adjacent to a given vertex.

Synonyms

• vicinity
• proximity
• quarter

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• neighborship
• neighborhood on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

English

Alternative forms

• back-street

Etymology

back +? street

Adjective

backstreet (comparative more backstreet, superlative most backstreet)

1. Associated with neighborhoods on back streets, often in older neighborhoods, with poorer residents.
   • 1949, Sinclair Lewis, The God-Seeker, New York: Popular Library, Chapter 18, p. 94,

     The agency was given to some deserving politician who, as he knew nothing at all about Indians and spoke no language except traces of back-street American, would not be prejudiced in Indian affairs and interfere with the highly informed traders.

   • 1989, Carol Shields, "Times of Sickness and Health" in The Collected Stories, Random House Canada, 2004, p. 349,

     They made these things for almost nothing, cutting them out of remnants they scrambled for in backstreet fabric outlets.

2. (figuratively) Done in poor and unsanitary conditions, secretly and illegally; back-alley.
   • 1965, Renée Short, Hansard, 15 June, 1965, [1]

     The results of self-induced and backstreet abortions come to our hospitals for the damage to be put right.

Further reading

• “backstreet abortion” in the Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• “backstreet”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–present.
• “backstreet” (US) / “backstreet” (UK) in Macmillan English Dictionary.

Noun

backstreet (plural backstreets)

1. Alternative spelling of back street