Vil"lage (?; 48), n. [F., fr. L. villaticus belonging to a country house or villa. See Villa, and cf. Villatic.]

A small assemblage of houses in the country, less than a town or city.

Village cart, a kind of two-wheeled pleasure carriage without a top.

Syn. -- Village, Hamlet, Town, City. In England, a hamlet denotes a collection of houses, too small to have a parish church. A village has a church, but no market. A town has both a market and a church or churches. A city is, in the legal sense, an incorporated borough town, which is, or has been, the place of a bishop's see. In the United States these distinctions do not hold.

 

© Webster 1913.