periphery

Borrowed from Middle French peripherie.^[1] Compare Middle English periferie (“one of three layers of atmosphere (lower, middle, and upper) believed to surround the Earth”), from the same origin, although the Modern English term most likely does not descend from it.

• enPR: pə-rĭf′ə-rē, IPA^(key): /pəˈɹɪf.ə.ɹi/

• Audio (US):

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• Rhymes: -ɪfəɹi
• Hyphenation US: pe‧riph‧ery; UK: per‧iph‧ery

periphery (plural peripheries)

1. The outside boundary, parts or surface of something.

   The suburbs are a city's periphery.

   • 2015 August 1, “Spatiotemporal Patterns of Tumor Occurrence in Children with Intraocular Retinoblastoma”, in PLOS ONE‎^[1], →DOI:

     Tumor location was concentrated in the macula and superonasal periphery in patients 13.2 months.

   • 2018, Balázs Áron Kovács, Peace Infrastructures and State-Building at the Margins, Springer, →ISBN, page 280:

     The phrase 'Imperial Manila' is used throughout the archipelago to denote the capital-heavy decision-making and the imposition of the will and culture of the political and economic centre on the peripheries.

2. A first-rank administrative division of Greece, subdivided into provinces.
3. (grammar, linguistics) The more anomalous and infrequent aspects of a language, as opposed to the frequent and regular core aspects.

• center

• peripherad
• peripheral

• “periphery”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• William Dwight Whitney and Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1914), “periphery, n.”, in The Century Dictionary: An Encyclopedic Lexicon of the English Language, revised edition, volumes IV (P–Simulant), New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC, page 4401, column 3.
• “periphery, n.”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC, retrieved 21 November 2008.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “periphery, n.”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC, pages 4401 (v.5), 970 (v.12), column 3.