subtopia
subtopia noun: sprawling suburbs, collectively.
Noun
subtopia (countable and uncountable, plural subtopias)
- Sprawling suburbs, collectively.
- In the 1890s and in the early years of the present century there was considerable building development in the area around Sanderstead, Warlingham and Oxted, where large villas were springing up. East Grinstead, Tunbridge Wells and Uckfield were growing fast, as was that loosely knit...1960 November, H. P. White, “The evolution of train services on the Southern's Oxted line”, in Trains Illustrated, page 662
- Their bland don't-mind-me-meekness is all the more offensive for it, resulting in an energy vampire form of architecture. It's subtopia writ large if anything.2023 September 23, Travis Elborough, “Traces of utopia”, in FT Weekend (House & Home section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 1
Forms of subtopia
| plural | subtopias |
|---|
Origin of subtopia
Blend of suburb + utopia, coined by British architectural critic and broadcaster Ian Nairn.
Words formed from subtopia
Questions about subtopia
- What does subtopia mean?
- Subtopia means sprawling suburbs, collectively.
- What part of speech is subtopia?
- Subtopia is a noun.
- What is the plural of subtopia?
- The plural of subtopia is subtopias.
Words near subtopia in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: subtopia (page history and authors). 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:
Cite this entry: “subtopia.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/subtopia. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.