Page 470 - Word Power Made Easy: The Complete Handbook for Building a Superior Vocabulary

cross the street in competition with high-powered motorcars, patiently stand in line outside

of movie houses, and then wait again in the lobby for seats to be vacated.
Also, they have the privilege of spending two hours a day going to and coming from
work.
As a result, city-dwellers are re ned, polished, courteous—or so the etymology of urbane
(from Latin urbs, city) tells us. (And you must be absurdly credulous, if not downright
gullible, to believe it.) The noun is urbanity (ur-BAN′-Ə-tee).

S o urbane people are gracious, a able, cultivated, suave, tactful—add any similar
adjectives you can think of.
Urban (UR′-bƏn) as an adjective simply refers to cities—urban a airs, urban areas, urban
populations, urban life, urban development, etc.

Consider some prefixes: sub-, near; inter-, between; intra-, inside, within; ex-, out.
Add each prefix to the root urbs, using the adjective suffix -an:

sub__________________: near the city
(Sub- has a number of meanings: under, near, close to, etc.)
inter__________________: between cities

intra__________________: within a city
ex__________________: out of the city

T h e suburbs are residential sections, or small communities, close to a large city;
Larchmont is a suburb of New York City, Whittier a suburb of Los Angeles.
Suburbia (sƏ-BUR′-bee-Ə) may designate suburbs as a group; suburban residents, or

suburbanites (sƏ-BUR′-bƏ-nīts′), as a group; or the typical manners, modes of living, customs,
etc. of suburban residents.
An interurban bus travels between cities, an intraurban bus within a single city.
An exurb (EKS′-urb) lies well beyond, way outside, a large city, and generally refers to a
region inhabited by well-to-do families. Exurb has derived forms corresponding to those of

suburb. Can you construct them?

Plural noun: __________________

Adjective: __________________

Resident: __________________

As a group; manners, customs, etc.: __________________

Urbs is the city; Latin rus, ruris is the country, i.e., farmland, elds, etc. So rural (R
R′-Əl) refers to country or farm regions, agriculture, etc.—a wealthy rural area.

Rustic (RUS′-tik) as an adjective may describe furniture or dwellings made of roughhewn
wood, or furnishings suitable to a farmhouse; or, when applied to a person, is an antonym
o f urbane—unsophisticated, boorish, lacking in social graces, uncultured. Noun: rusticity
(rus-TIS′-Ə-tee). Rustic is also a noun designating a person with such characteristics, as in,
“He was considered a rustic by his classmates, all of whom came from cultured and wealthy