fringes

Noun

fringe (plural fringes)

1. A decorative border.
   • the fringe of a picture
   1. (broadly) A border or edging.
      • He walked up the heath’s western edge, beside a fringe of scrub where hogweed grew in tangles and brambles rose taller than him.2020 March 5, Tom Lamont, “The invisible city: how a homeless man built a life underground”, in The Guardian
2. (also, figuratively) A marginal or peripheral part.
   • the confines of grace and the fringes of repentance1651–1653, Jer[emy] Taylor, ΕΝΙΑΥΤΟΣ [Eniautos]. A Course of Sermons for All the Sundays of the Year. […], 2nd edition, London: […] Richard Royston […], published 1655, →OCLC

   Synonyms:

   edge, periphery

3. A group of people situated on the periphery of a larger community.
   • About an hour later, the two were sitting at a comparatively isolated table in a restaurant called Sickler’s, downtown, a highly favored place among, chiefly, the intellectual fringe of students at the college—the same students, more or less, who, had they been Yale or Harvard men, might rather too...1955, J. D. Salinger, “Franny”, in Franny and Zooey, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, published 1991, →ISBN, page 10
   1. (also, attributive) Those members of a political party, or any social group, holding extremist or unorthodox views.
      • a fringe group of the party
4. The periphery of an area, especially a town or city.
   • He lives on the fringe of London.

   Synonyms:

   outskirts

See all 16 meanings of fringe