| Term | Meaning |
| emigrate | to leave one's homeland to live in another country |
| ethnic group | minorities that speak different languages or follow different customs from most people in a country |
| steerage | cramped noisy quarters on the lower decks of a ship |
| assimilate | to become part of something, such as part of a country's culture |
| tenement | an apartment building in which several families rented rooms |
| slum | poor, run down neighborhood where these buildings were located |
| suburb | residential area located outside of a city center |
| Gilded Age | both the extravagant wealth of the late 1800s and the terrible poverty that lay underneath |
| realism | the writing that described the real lives of people of the time |
| regionalism | writing that focused on a particular part of the country |
| ragtime | music with complex rhythms that dominated popular music for about 20 yers near the turn of the century |
| vaudeville | vareity shows of the early 1900s with dancing, singing, comedy, and magic acts |
| sweatshop | a shop where workers worked for long hours at low wages with unhealty conditions |
| settlement house | a place where the provided community services like medical care |