Municipality
noun
noun ·6 syllables ·Uncommon ·College level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 A district with a government that typically encloses no other governed districts; a borough, city, or incorporated town or village.
- 2 people living in a town or city having local self-government wordnet
- 3 The governing body of such a district.
"From another point of view, it was a place without a soul. The well-to-do had hearts of stone; the rich were brutally bumptious; the Press, the Municipality, all the public men, were ridiculously, vaingloriously self-satisfied."
- 4 an urban district having corporate status and powers of self-government wordnet
- 5 In the Philippines and in Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries, second-level administrative divisions that may house one or more cities or towns whose head of government may be called mayors or, in Mexico, municipal presidents.
Example
More examples"Viana is a Brazilian municipality with an estimate population of 65000."
Etymology
Borrowed from French municipalité (Edmund Burke), from municipal + -ité, from Latin municipalis, from municipium (“free city, township”), from municeps (“citizen of a free city or township”), from mūnus (“duty, service”) + -ceps (“taker, catcher”). Equivalent to municipal + -ity.
Related phrases
More for "municipality"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.