In
New England local usage there is an ambiguity in the word "town."
As an official designation it means the inhabitants of a township
considered as a community or corporate body. In common parlance it
often means the patch of land constituting the township on the map, as
when we say that Squire Brown's elm is "the biggest tree in town." But
it still oftener means a collection of streets, houses, and families
too large to be called a village, but without the municipal government
that characterizes a city. Sometimes it is used _par excellence_
for a city, as when an inhabitant of Cambridge, itself a large
suburban city, speaks of going to Boston as going "into town." But
such cases are of course mere survivals from the time when the suburb
was a village. In American usage generally the town is something
between village and city, a kind of inferior or incomplete city. The
image which it calls up in the mind is of something urban and not
rural. This agrees substantially with the usage in European history,
where "town" ordinarily means a walled town or city as contrasted with
a village. In England the word is used either in this general sense,
or more specifically as signifying an inferior city, as in America.
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