A rarely used word (at least in the circles in which I move) referring to the area near or surrounding a place, or to one’s usual haunts. Hard to imagine using it nowadays except in jest.
‘The street lanterns in these purlieus were few at most… ‘
‘… the irregular and huddled purlieus which had been the city of London in the reign of Queen Elizabeth’.
Source: Virginia Woolf, Orlando, ed. Rachel Bowlby, Oxford: World’s Classics, 1992, p. 56 and 214
