cité

Forms

cité f (plural cités)^[1] Old French ciutat (10th century), ciptet (11th century), citet and cité; the nominative cit also occurs.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old French citet, inherited from Latin cīvitās (“citizenship, body of citizens, state”), through its accusative form.^[2][5][6] The Latin word, derived from cīvis (“citizen”), came to mean the city as a political body, translating Ancient Greek πόλις (pólis), and then any town, taking the place of urbs and oppidum in late Latin.^[3] Bloch and Wartburg note that popular Latin kept only the sense of a town; the political sense was taken again from Latin in the 16th century.^[6] Littré points out that Old French cit and Old Occitan ciu continue the Latin nominative, a rare case.^[4]

Cognate with Italian città, Spanish ciudad, Portuguese cidade, Catalan ciutat and Romanian cetate.^[7][3] The English word city was borrowed in the 13th century.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found as ciutat in the Vie de saint Léger (950–1000), meaning a town.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

Early competition from ville narrowed the word, so that by the 14th century it named only the oldest part of a town, as the Île de la Cité in Paris; this is also the sense of the English City of London.^[3][2]

From the 15th century the word renewed the political sense of Latin civitas: a community governing itself by its own laws (about 1460, Chastellain), droit de cité (1753), and figuratively avoir droit de cité (1829, Hugo).^[2][3] It also named an ideal society and the heavenly city, cité céleste (1690).^[2][3]

From 1829 it named a group of houses forming a whole, then housing built for one group of people: cité ouvrière (1878), cité-jardin (1904), cité universitaire.^[2][3] In the 1980s les cités came to compete with banlieue for suburban housing estates.^[3]

Timeline

• 950–1000 – Ciutat appears in the Vie de saint Léger.^[2]
• mid-11th century – Ciptet in the Vie de saint Alexis.^[2][8]
• c. 1100 – Cité in the Chanson de Roland.^[2]
• late 14th century – Froissart uses it for the oldest part of Paris.^[2]
• 1440–1475 – Chastellain uses it for a self-governing political community.^[2]
• 1690 – Furetière records cité céleste.^[2]
• 1829 – Hugo writes tout a droit de cité en poésie.^[2][7]
• 1878 – The Académie records cité ouvrière.^[2]
• 1904 – Cité-jardin “garden city” appears.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. (antiquity) A self-governing political community, a city-state: les cités grecques.^[7][2]
2. Droit de cité: the rights of a citizen; figuratively, avoir droit de cité, to be accepted somewhere.^[7][2]
3. A large city, seen as a community.^[7][2]
4. The oldest, central part of a town: l'île de la Cité.^[2][3]
5. A group of buildings for one purpose or group of people: cité universitaire, cité ouvrière; a housing estate.^[7][2][1]

Word family

• citoyen

Related words

• citadelle
• citadin
• civil
• civique
• Latin cīvitās
• English city

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Trésor de la langue française informatisé (2004), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/tlfi; electronic version of Imbs, Paul; Quemada, Bernard, eds. (1971–1994), Trésor de la langue française, Paris: CNRS / Gallimard
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
4. ^ a b Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
5. ^ Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 2, 724b
6. ^ a b Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France
7. ^ a b c d e f g Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
8. ^ Guilbert, Louis; Lagane, René; Niobey, Georges, eds. (1971–1978; 1989), Grand Larousse de la langue française, Paris: Larousse