Meaning & use
infrastructure
Last updated
Meanings
noununcountable
The basic structures and services a country or area needs in order to work, such as roads, bridges, power and water supplies.
Grammar: Uncountable and takes a singular verb: the infrastructure is old.
Patterns
- invest in infrastructure
- infrastructure project
The city spent millions on repairing its aging infrastructure.
Floods damaged roads and other infrastructure.
Good infrastructure helps businesses grow.
noununcountablecomputing
The basic systems, such as servers and networks, that support a company's technology.
Grammar: Often used with IT or cloud: IT infrastructure.
The firm moved its infrastructure to the cloud.
A fault in the network infrastructure caused the outage.
Common combinations
- crumbling infrastructure
- The country has crumbling infrastructure.
- invest in infrastructure
- Governments invest in infrastructure to boost growth.
- critical infrastructure
- Power plants are critical infrastructure.
- transport infrastructure
- New transport infrastructure links the towns.
- infrastructure spending
- Infrastructure spending rose last year.
Synonyms and how they differ
- facilities
- Broader and looser; can mean any buildings or services provided for use.
- framework
- Stresses a supporting structure of ideas or rules more than physical things.
- utilities
- Refers only to services such as water, gas and electricity.
Word family
- infrastructural adjective
- relating to infrastructure
- structure noun
- something built or arranged
Commonly confused: infrastructure or superstructure?
infrastructure vs superstructure
A superstructure is the part built on top of a base, such as the upper part of a ship.
Practice
The government plans to improve the country's roads, bridges and railways as part of a major ___ program.
Choose one answer.
Infrastructure covers the basic physical systems of a country. The other nouns do not describe roads and bridges.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “infrastructure”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.