Talk:city

Misleading "In Europe a city is a place that had succeeded to obtain the right to build a city wall, a belfort, etc... from the impoverishing nobility."

This may have been true in some circumstances in some periods in some places (e.g. incorporated by royal charter and given various rights) but it is no longer relevant.

'City' is a very loose term. Wikipedia lists places in the USA with populations of a couple of hundred which call themselves cities in the UK they would just quailfy as villages.

It is important not to confuse the informal words 'city', 'town, etc. with official definitions of administrative districts. 82.38.97.206 21:09, 13 December 2005 (UTC)mikeL

RFV discussion
Rfv-senses. Both adjective senses, both badly written, and seem to be the noun used attributively. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:56, 3 June 2010 (UTC)


 * RFV failed, sense removed. —Ruakh TALK 11:10, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

city
Two proper noun senses with the head word "the city" referring to Manhattan and san Francisco. Arguably these should be at City. In fact, I'm not sure whether to rfc these or move them, or what. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:55, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I added those, because I thought at the time that cites supported both senses as lowercase. If cites support both, we should have both. &#x200b;—msh210℠ 15:58, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Surely in any part of the world "the city" with or without an upper-case "C" regularly refers to the nearest city, just as "town" refers to the nearest town. The word doesn't "mean" that particular city or town in any dictionary sense.    D b f  i  r  s   20:01, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
 * But Manhattan is not a city. &#x200b;—msh210℠ 20:16, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It is the best-known borough of the City of New York. It is a keep by the misnomer principle. Just as the "City" in UK refers to small area(s ?) of London and to the UK banking industry. Attestation and presentation (eg, main entry or alternative spelling) are separate matters. DCDuring TALK 22:39, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Or... maybe... does city also mean "the main part of a city" or some such? (I can imagine someone living within the borders of a town saying "I'm going to town" to mean the main part of the town. I can't quite picture that for city, but perhaps it's used.) If so, then the "Manhattan" sense is just an example thereof and can be deleted. The question then is, should we have that sense of city, and of town? (We lack both.) Is it a separate sense, or a metonym not worthy of a sense? &#x200b;—msh210℠ 16:17, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I am far from convinced that these 'definitions' of the word city belong in a dictionary at all; I'm with Dbfirs. They definitely don't belong under this entry - they should be under The City or, just possibly, City, if anywhere. Is 'The City' really used for Manhattan in particular, or for New York City in general, as Wikipedia maintains? Why isn't Oklahoma listed as well? What about Manchester City football team? |How many more claimants are there for this title? Where do we stop? --Oolong 19:47, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Deleted the unverified senses. Both may be restored if properly cited.--Jusjih 14:36, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

in the city
People can use in the city to refer to a nation's entire array of cities, just as we say in the country to refer to all rural areas at once. But cities are not contiguous, so one might expect to hear "in the cities" instead. Thoughts? — Soap — 12:52, 16 May 2023 (UTC)