Etymologically
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municipality

This is the current revision of this entry, as edited by bogdan on 24 October 2026 at 18:41. This address is a permanent link to this version.
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Pronunciation

  • UK: /mjʊˌnɪsɪˈpælɪti/[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French municipalité,[2][3][4][5][6] formed from municipal and the suffix -ité, the French counterpart of -ity.[2][4][6] The OED dates the French word to 1758 in the sense of a town's governing body and to 1791 for the town or district itself, and compares Italian municipalità (1789) and Spanish municipalidad (1826).[2] The French adjective goes back to Latin mūnicipālis (“of a municipium”),[2][3][6] from mūniceps (“citizen of a self-governing town”), a compound of mūnia (“civic offices, duties”) and -ceps (“taker”), from capiō (“to take”),[2][7][6] which Etymonline traces to Proto-Indo-European *kap- (“to grasp”).[3] Klein credits the statesman Edmund Burke with introducing the word into English.[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

A town, city or district with its own local self-government, or its community: the OED's first quotation is from Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).[2][8] Etymonline dates the word to 1789,[3] and Dictionary.com to 1780–90.[9]

Semantic evolution

The second sense, the governing body of such a town or district, is recorded in the same year, 1790, in the Pennsylvania Gazette.[2][8] From 1795 the word was also used in Roman history for a municipium, a town whose citizens held Roman citizenship but were governed by their own laws.[2][6][7] A rare sense, government on municipal principles, appears between 1856 and 1883 and is now obsolete.[2][8] According to Ayto, the adjective municipal at first referred to the internal affairs of a state, and its application to local government became common only in the 19th century.[7]

Timeline

  • 1758 – French municipalité, a town's governing body.[2]
  • 1790 – a self-governing town, city or district, in Burke's Reflections.[2][4]
  • 1790 – the governing body of such a town or district.[2]
  • 1795 – in Roman history, a municipium.[2]
  • 1856–1883 – government on municipal principles (obsolete).[2][8]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. A town, city or district that has corporate status and its own local government: The new road crosses three municipalities.
  2. The governing body of such a place: The municipality has raised parking fees.
  3. (Roman history) A municipium.

References

  1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  4. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  5. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  6. ^ a b c d e f Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  7. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
  8. ^ a b c d Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
  9. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House