city-state

American  

[sit-ee-steyt] / ˈsɪt iˌsteɪt /

noun

city-states plural

1. a sovereign state consisting of an autonomous city and, especially historically, any dependent settlements or territories.

   The Corinthian order of architecture is named for its legendary origin in the ancient Greek city-state of Corinth.

   Singapore’s role in shaping global entrepreneurship has further strengthened that city-state's position in the world economy.

---

city-state British  

noun

1. a state consisting of a sovereign city and its dependencies. Among the most famous are the great independent cities of the ancient world, such as Athens, Sparta, Carthage, Thebes, Corinth, and Rome

---

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• city-states
  plural

Etymology

Origin of city-state

First recorded in 1890–95

Explanation

A city-state is an independent city — and sometimes its surrounding land — which has its own government, completely separate from nearby countries. Monaco is a city-state. Today, there are only five city-states that are truly self-governing, but in the past this was more common. In fact, well-known cities such as Rome and Athens were city-states, and the entire country of Italy was made up of independent merchant city-states during the Renaissance. These days, government tends to be concentrated in a larger country, rather than split into small, sovereign cities.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

city-state city-states

This includes Chevron Singapore’s 50% interest in the Singapore Refining Co., which operates a refinery on Jurong Island in the city-state.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 14, 2026

Alternate proposals would make Donnyland into an economic development zone — a city-state like Monaco on the French Mediterranean that could be semiautonomous.

From Salon ● Apr. 30, 2026

Other Chinese tech companies in the Southeast Asian city-state include e-commerce giant Shein, and TikTok -- a subsidiary of ByteDance, which is still based in China.

From Barron's ● Apr. 28, 2026

In ancient Greece, the city-state of Sparta forced the surrender of Athens by blocking its grain supplies.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 16, 2026

In their settlements of the Tigris and Euphrates valley, they also invented the city-state, formal religion, writing, mathematics, law, and, to a large extent, architecture.

From "The Annotated Mona Lisa" by Carol Strickland and John Boswell

The region's city-states -- Ur, Uruk, and Lagash among them -- developed complex political and religious systems that became the blueprint for later societies.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 27, 2025

The ancient Greek mindset, curious and adaptive, owes much to living amid hundreds of neighboring city-states with distinct cultures.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 29, 2025

“Antigone” was performed during an uneasy respite from war with other Greek city-states.

From Salon ● Feb. 25, 2024

And the theater was used to help keep the coalition of city-states that made up ancient Greece from tearing one another apart for two centuries.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 21, 2023

The Mayans of the tenth century CE built city-states as far south as Belize and Honduras.

From "An Indigenous People’s History of the United States" by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz