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Glite Dictionary
🏙️ City center 🏙️ Central area 🏙️ To city center
downtown

downtown

930 1.0
The main part of a city with many offices, shops, and restaurants
  • noun
  • /ˈdaʊnˌtaʊn/
  • US
translation icon : centro de la ciudad
  • My friend and I own a hair salon downtown.
  • a downtown area
  • the downtown core
  • center of downtown

She lives in Houston now, downtown Houston, amazing building.

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Examples

  • If you need me, I'll be downtown.

    The China Syndrome (1979)

  • So it was in the heart of downtown Louisville.

  • There are very popular downtown areas right around us.

  • Downtown LA is the downtown part of Los Angeles.

  • So we, we drove to downtown Los Angeles to see your show.

    Team Coco

  • When he was bored, he used to walk downtown to the department store and visit us.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • These earrings I got in downtown LA for like next to nothing.

    Tati

  • I join you today from our new studios in downtown Dubai.

  • Over the past decade, downtown San Diego has experienced a tremendous boom in condominium construction.

    Academic text (2008)

  • After shopping all day, we decided to grab dinner at a popular restaurant downtown.

Synonyms

midtown
vsdowntown
  • US
46 3.5

A named central area of a city with shops and offices

is the main business district rather than an intermediate central area
city center
vsdowntown
  • US
18 1.1

The main area of a city with most shops and offices

focuses more on commercial and business activity than civic buildings
urban center
vsdowntown
14 3.4

A large city where many people live and work

is about the central district within a city rather than the entire metropolis
business district
vsdowntown
11 2.4

A central part of a city where most offices and shops are

is the whole main city area including noncommercial parts
central city
vsdowntown
4 3.3

The main busy area in the middle of a city where people work and meet

emphasizes the commercial core rather than cultural activities

Antonyms

outskirts
3.0

Parts of a town or city that are far from the center

How Central

city center
  • US
18 1.1
downtown
  • US
930 1.0
neighborhood
  • US
∞ 1.8
suburb
286 2.7
outskirts
3.0

Surface Forms

downtown singular
downtowns plural

Morphology

downtown = town (transparent) = down + town

The meaning 'central part of a town' is a clear compositional combination of 'down' (toward) + 'town' and is readily inferable by learners. [Postprocessing: moved 'down' from base_words to prefix]

Etymology

Downtown comes from the simple parts down and town, from 19th-century American speech when people said they were going 'down' to the main part of the city. So as a noun, downtown means the city's main business and activity area.