Word.ws English Dictionary

enclave

/ˈɛnkleɪv//ˈɑnkleɪv/

enclave noun: a political, cultural or social entity or part thereof that is completely surrounded by another.

enclave: a political, cultural or social entity or part thereof that is completely surrounded by another
Image: Menchi, later adapted by Fabiform, Fredrik, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

enclave (plural enclaves)

  1. A political, cultural or social entity or part thereof that is completely surrounded by another.
    • The Republic of San Marino is an enclave of Italy.
    • The streets around Union Square form a Protestant enclave within an otherwise Catholic neighbourhood.
  2. A group that is set off from a larger population by its characteristic or behavior.
    • They were learning to do what in all my years in the music business I never saw — which was women running a record company, women producing concerts, women learning to be engineers, women moving into this absolutely all-male enclave. You never saw a woman in any of those positions, in any of that...1989 December 3, Pam Mitchell, Ronnie Gilbert, “Carrying On The Honorable Tradition Of 'Protest Music'”, in Gay Community News, volume 17, number 21, page 9
    • What is unbearable, in fact, is the feeling, 13 years after 9/11, that America has been chasing its tail; that, in some whack-a-mole horror show, the quashing of a jihadi enclave here only spurs the sprouting of another there; that the ideology of Al Qaeda is still reverberating through a blocked...2014 November 17, Roger Cohen, “The horror! The horror! The trauma of ISIS [print version: International New York Times, 18 November 2014, p. 9]”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on...
  3. An isolated portion of an application's address space, such that data in an enclave can only be accessed by code in the same enclave.
    • When an enclave spans a system boundary in a sysplex, it is called a multisystem enclave.2010, Mike Ebbers, Dino Tonelli, Jason Arnold, Co-locating Transactional and Data Warehouse Workloads on System z, page 245

Verb

enclave (third-person singular simple present enclaves, present participle enclaving, simple past and past participle enclaved)

  1. (transitive) To enclose within a foreign territory.

enclave meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

enclave in Hindi

एन्क्लेव

enclave in Tamil

அந்நிய சிற்றூர், அயலகச் சிற்றூர், பிறநாடுசூழ் பகுதி, வேற்றுச்சூழ், வளாகம்

enclave in Marathi

एन्क्लेव्ह, एन्क्लेव, एन्क्लेव्हला

enclave in Urdu

محصورہ
More languagesFewer languages
enclave in Bengali
ছিটমহল chiṭmohol
enclave in Telugu
ఎన్క్లేవ్, ఎన్కలేవ్
enclave in Malayalam
എൻക്ലേവ്, എൻക്ലാവ്
enclave in Kannada
ವಿದೇಶದ ನೆಲದಿಂದ ಪರಿವೃತವಾದ ಭೂಪ್ರದೇಶ, ಪರಾವೃತ ಪ್ರದೇಶ, ಆವೃತ ವಲಯ, ಸುತ್ತುವರಿದ ಊರು
enclave in Punjabi
ਐਨਕਲੇਵ, ਐਨਕਲੈਵ, ਇਨਕਲੇਵ
enclave in Gujarati
એન્ક્લેવ, એનક્લેવ
enclave in Odia
ଏନ୍କ୍ଲେଭ୍, ଏନକ୍ଲେଭ୍, ଏନ୍କ୍ଲେଭ
enclave in Nepali
एन्क्लेभ, एन्क्लेव
enclave in Indonesian
enklave
enclave in Thai
ดินแดนแทรก din-dɛɛn-sɛ̂ɛk

Examples of enclave in a sentence

  • The village of research was very enclaved and no public transportation.
  • It was, and is, an unlikely place to find an enclave of acceptance.
  • Comes the retort: Putin has put nuclear-capable missiles in the Kaliningrad enclave between Poland and Lithuania.

All 28 example sentences with enclave

Forms of enclave

Noun
pluralenclaves
Verb
third-person singular presentenclaves
present participleenclaving
past participleenclaved
pastenclaved

Plural of enclave: enclaves

Origin of enclave

Borrowed from French enclave, from Middle French enclave (“enclave”), deverbal of enclaver (“to inclose”), from Old French enclaver (“to inclose, lock in”), from Vulgar Latin *inclāvāre (“to lock in”), from in + Latin clavis (“key”) or clavus (“nail, bolt”). Compare inlock.

Words formed from enclave

Questions about enclave

What does enclave mean?
Enclave means a political, cultural or social entity or part thereof that is completely surrounded by another.
What is enclave in Hindi?
Enclave in Hindi is एन्क्लेव. See Enclave meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is enclave?
Enclave can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce enclave?
Enclave is pronounced /ˈɛnkleɪv/ (UK).
What is the plural of enclave?
The plural of enclave is enclaves.

Words near enclave in the dictionary

  1. enclavated
  2. enclavates
  3. enclavating
  4. enclavation
  5. enclavations
  6. enclave
  7. enclaved
  8. enclavement
  9. enclavements
  10. enclaver
  11. enclavers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: enclave (page history and authors); enclave (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); enclave (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); enclave (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); enclave (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ছিটমহল (Bengali) (page history and authors); enclave (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); enclave (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); enclave (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); enclave (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); enclave (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); enclave (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); enclave (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-uk-enclave.ogg, en-us-enclave.ogg.

Cite this entry: “enclave.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/enclave. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.