Meaning & use
village
Last updated
Meanings
nouncountable
A small settlement, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town, usually in the countryside, with a few shops or services and a close community.
Grammar: Use in for living there and to for going there: she lives in a village, we walked to the village.
Patterns
- a village in somewhere
- a village near somewhere
My grandmother grew up in a village with one shop and a church.
The village lies at the foot of the hills about ten miles from the coast.
Every summer the village holds a fair on the green.
nounsingular
All the people who live in a village, thought of as one group.
Grammar: Refers to the residents, as in the whole village came; the verb is normally singular in American English.
Patterns
- the whole village
The whole village turned out to welcome the returning soldiers.
The village was shocked when the old school closed.
Word of the wedding spread through the village within an hour.
nouncountable
A group of buildings put up for a particular purpose, such as housing athletes or hosting vacationers.
Grammar: Usually follows a describing word: an athletes' village, a holiday village.
Patterns
- the athletes' village
The athletes' village was turned into apartments after the Games.
They stayed in a vacation village with a pool and a small market.
A retirement village near the lake offers shared gardens.
Word forms
| plural | villages |
|---|
Common combinations
- a remote village
- We hiked to a remote village that had no road.
- a fishing village
- The painting shows a quiet fishing village at dawn.
- village life
- Village life moves at a slower pace than life in the city.
- the village green
- Children played cricket on the village green.
- a village hall
- The meeting was held in the village hall.
- the global village
- Cheap flights have turned the world into a global village.
Synonyms and how they differ
- hamlet
- Hamlet is smaller than a village and may have no shop or church, so it suggests only a few houses.
- settlement
- Settlement is a neutral, formal word for any place where people live, and it can cover a camp or a new colony as well as a village.
- small town
- A small town has more shops, services and people than a village, so it is a step up in size and busyness.
Opposites
Word family
- villager noun
- a person who lives in a village
- villagers noun
- the people of a village taken together
Commonly confused: village or town?
village vs town
A town is larger than a village and has more services, such as a bigger market or a station. People often use the words loosely, but a village feels smaller and closer-knit.
Practice
Everyone in the ___ knew the baker by name, because only about two hundred people lived there.
Choose one answer.
A village is a small community where people know each other. A city or metropolis is far larger, and a suburb is part of a larger urban area.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “village”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.