Forms: 5 faubourgh, fabo(u)r, 6 faubor, (foubour), (fourbourg), 7–8 fauxburgh, 7–9 fauxbourg, 9 fauberg, 7– faubourg. [late ME. faubourg, fabo(u)r, a. F. faubourg. From the 15th c. to the beginning of the 17th c. the word was more or less naturalized, esp. in Scotland; it is now used only as foreign, with Fr. pronunciation or (more frequently) semi-anglicized.
Littré considers faubourg, formerly also spelt faux-bourg (= ‘false borough’) to be a corruption of the earlier-recorded synonym forsbourg (f. fors outside + bourg borough), which is the source of some of the Eng. forms given above. The word faubourg, faux-bourg, seems not to be known in F. before 15th c., but its existence in 1380 is implied by L. falsus burgus in a charter cited by Du Cange. Its origin may possibly be found in the MHG. phàlburgere (also spelt falborgere), which according to German scholars originally meant ‘burghers of the pale,’ i.e., ‘persons living outside the city wall but within the palisade’; it afterwards denoted a special class of non-resident burghers, having only partial civic rights. The word occurs frequently in the imperial charters of 13–14th c., sometimes latinized as phalburgenses; and a charter of 1365, according to a French translation given by Laguille (1727) speaks of ‘des faux bourgeois dits en allemand Pfalbourguers.’ From these facts it seems not unlikely that faubourg, faux-bourg, may have been evolved from phalburgensis or its punning translation falsus burgensis, faux bourgeois.]
A portion of a town or city, lying outside the gates; a suburb. (In Paris the name is still retained by various parts of the city which were originally suburbs, but have long been included within the walls.)
1470, 1489. [see FABOR].
1483. Caxton, Gold. Leg., 308/4. The other kepe the cytees the townes the castellys and the faubourghs.
1523. Ld. Berners, Froiss., I. ccclxv. 596. Theyr foreryders went to the faubories of Sence.
1582–8. Hist. Jas. VI. (1825), 6. Neir the toun wall and fauxbourg thereof.
1608. Ld. Herbert, Trav. fr. Paris, in Life (1886), 90, note.
| You must conceive they’re cosen’d, mocked, and come | |
| To Fourbourgs St. Germans, there take a Room. |
1655. Sir E. Nicholas, in The Nicholas Papers (Camden), II. 315. My lo. of Buckingham lyes here in these fauxbourgs.
1739. Gray, Jrnl. in France, Wks. 1884, I. 243. A charming view in descending a very steep Hill just before you come to Lyons, of the Fauxbourgs of that City, the Saône, & the little mountains about it, covered with Convents, Houses, and Gardens of the Bourgeois.
1830. R. Chambers, Life Jas. I., I. 40. The Canongate, one of the fauxbourgs of Edinburgh.
1877. D. M. Wallace, Russia, xxiii. 355. At the further end of this fauberg stood a fortified tower.
