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When Should You Use urbane?
City slickers and country folk have long debated whether life is better in town or in the wide-open spaces, and urbane is a term that springs from the throes of that debate. In its earliest English uses, urbane was synonymous with its close relative urban ("of, relating to, characteristic of, or constituting a city"). Both words come from the Latin adjective urbanus ("urban, urbane"), which in turn comes from urbs, meaning "city." The modern sense of urbane developed from the belief (no doubt fostered by cosmopolitan city dwellers) that living in the city made one more suave and polished than did leading a rural life.
Examples of urbane in a Sentence
Judy Berman, Time, 1 May 2025
While the town prided itself as the most urbane, sophisticated place between St. Louis and San Francisco, drunkenness, gambling and debauchery, typical of any frontier mining camp, were the hallmarks of its nightlife.
—Richard Grant, Smithsonian Magazine, 31 Mar. 2025
Oliveira’s father was a wealthy industrialist, and a view from the old house’s perspective invokes the comforts that his family’s prosperity afforded, and, with these, the inner vistas, the aesthetic initiation that opened up to him in his urbane youth.
—Richard Brody, New Yorker, 26 Mar. 2025
After 26 years spent working around Hart’s erratic binges and missing mornings, Rodgers (Andrew Scott at his most urbane) has found a new partner in Oscar Hammerstein (Simon Delaney), a large, bluff man who reveres Hart as his profession’s sage.
—Stephanie Bunbury, Deadline, 18 Feb. 2025
See All Example Sentences for urbane
Cite this Entry
“Urbane.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/urbane. Accessed 23 May. 2025.
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