milieu

noun

Etymology: PIE word *me Borrowed from French milieu (“physical or social environment; group of people with a common point of view”), from Middle French milieu, meilleu, mileu, from Old French milliu, meillieu, mileu (“middle”), from mi- (prefix meaning ‘half’) (from Latin medius (“half; middle”)) + lieu, leu (“place”) (from Latin locus (“place; spot (specific location)”)).

1. An environment or setting; a medium; environs

   “Australian cinema is a messy affair. It is a messiness not only in our ways of knowing, reading, consuming and producing films and the larger film-making milieu of which they are a part, but also a messiness among the films themselves […]”

   “In the electronic milieu, accuracy is accomplished by the technology, and the appropriate strategy for judgment is likely to entail ensuring coherence within and across electronic and naturalistic components of the ecology.”

2. A social environment or setting.

   “The distinction between the constituents in, and the conditions of, the integral life-career of person is well brought out in contrasting the attitudes of attention which persons normally develop with the milieux or social media which serve as the theater for their exercise. […] The assertive attitude of challenge finds its milieux in the domains of sport, art, exercise, industry, etc., to which the conception of gestalt may well be extended.”

   “Confronted by the multiplicity of the milieus that could influence curriculum activity, we need some way of deciding not only what kinds of milieus should claim our attention, but also what kinds of knowledge about them we should attend to.”

3. A group of people with a common point of view; a social class or group.

   “It's not easy to find someone whom one has mislaid for years in London, particularly if she belongs to the sort of milieu that Anna belonged to, but clearly the first thing to do is look in the telephone book.”