A place where people live that is larger than a village but smaller than a city, usually with shops, schools, and other services.
It comes from Old English 'tūn', which originally meant 'fence' or 'enclosure', then 'settlement'. Many English place names ending in '-ton' or '-town' come from this root.
A 'town' began as just a fenced-in space, showing that safety came before size. Even today, we feel the difference between 'my town' and 'the city'—one feels enclosed and familiar, the other wide and anonymous.
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