-ˈyə(r)(z)
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Milieu Entered English in the 1800s
Milieu comes from Old French mi (meaning "middle") and lieu ("place"). The word refers to an environment or setting. In English, lieu also is used to mean "place" and most often occurs in the phrase "in lieu of," as in "Cash is preferred but in lieu of cash a credit card is acceptable."
Synonyms
Examples of milieu in a Sentence
Edmund White, New York Review of Books, 12 Feb. 2009
People in France admire the United States, and much of what passes for anti-Americanism is limited to the intellectual milieu of Paris.
—Jonathan Alter et al., Newsweek, 29 May 2000
She might stay home, might marry and live as a housewife. And if her milieu does not sanction such a solution, there are, she knows, milieux which do.
—David Mamet, Jafsie and John Henry: Essays, 1999
Certainly there are very few American milieus today in which having read the latest work of Joyce Carol Oates or Richard Ford is more valuable, as social currency, than having caught the latest John Travolta movie or knowing how to navigate the Web.
—Jonathan Franzen, Harper's, April 1996
They're caught in their own hazy milieu—working, smoking, talking, drinking.
—Gerri Hirshey, Rolling Stone, 12 Nov. 1992
young, innovative artists thrive in the freewheeling milieu that a big city offers
Daniel Miller, Los Angeles Times, 13 Aug. 2024
The Aspen Art Fair’s inaugural edition wows jet-setters Photography Courtesy of Hotel Jerome, Auberge Resorts Collection
Hotel Jerome, part of the Auberge Resorts Collection, was a splendid milieu for the first installment of the Aspen Art Fair, which wrapped earlier this month.
—Alia Akkam, Architectural Digest, 12 Aug. 2024
My liberal, upper-middle-class urban milieu likes to pride itself on trusting the science, but many of us are in thrall to a toxic ideology whose legitimate insights are braided with myth and pseudoscience.
—Michelle Goldberg, The Mercury News, 6 Aug. 2024
Maddie, whose literary hopes were discouraged by her conservative milieu, is both a textbook case of the problem with no name and the epitome of an ambition monster.
—Inkoo Kang, The New Yorker, 2 Aug. 2024
See all Example Sentences for milieu 
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'milieu.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near milieu
Cite this Entry
“Milieu.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/milieu. Accessed 8 Sep. 2024.
Copy CitationKids Definition
milieu
noun
-ˈyü
Medical Definition
milieu
noun
-ˈyü; ˈmēl-ˌyü
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