company town

American

noun

a town whose inhabitants are mainly dependent on one company for employment, housing, supplies, etc.

company town British

noun

a town built by a company for its employees

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of company town

An Americanism dating back to 1930–35

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

It is a company town of 2,400—purpose-built to support coal-mining operations now owned by Conuma, which employs over 1,000 people mostly in the area.

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 16, 2026

Industrialist Henry Ford was after rubber when he built the company town Fordlandia on a Connecticut-sized patch of Brazil’s Amazon forest in 1927.

From Barron's • Jan. 18, 2026

Pocahontas Fuel bought 1,000 acres and built a mine and mine camp that was a quintessential paternal company town.

From Salon • Jul. 20, 2024

But unlike the other two, Seattle and San Francisco, Washington is not a technology hub but a company town that relies on a single employer to a degree not seen elsewhere.

From New York Times • May 22, 2024

They saw the Pullman Company’s “Ideal of Industry” exhibit, with its detailed model of Pullman’s company town, which the company extolled as a workers’ paradise.

From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023