municipality
Americannoun
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municipalities
plural
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a city, town, or other district possessing corporate existence and usually its own local government.
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a community under municipal jurisdiction.
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the governing body of such a district or community.
noun
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a city, town, or district enjoying some degree of local self-government
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the governing body of such a unit
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of municipality
From the French word municipalité, dating back to 1780–90. See municipal, -ity
Explanation
If you live in a town or city that has a mayor or other officials who govern it, you live in a municipality. The word municipality comes from the Latin municipium, meaning "free city." A municipality has its own government, but sometimes municipalities join together to share services. For instance, two neighboring municipalities might decide to share a single recycling center in order to cut costs.
Vocabulary lists containing municipality
Just Mercy
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Inherit the Wind
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A Clockwork Orange
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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.
See Examples For:
Police have imposed a lockdown in Kempton Park in the Ekurhuleni municipality and officers mounted roadblocks after three of the bodies were found this week.
From Barron's ● Sep. 17, 2026
Nice follows earlier work in Deshaies, Guadeloupe, which received recognition in 2023, and Cannes, which became the first municipality in mainland France to receive it in January 2024.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 10, 2026
“The challenge that every municipality in New Jersey has is that the property-tax rate is often the single most important determinant of how people view their elected officials,” Pfeiffer said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 6, 2026
Putellas was born in a municipality of Catalonia called Mollet del Valles in the province of Barcelona, and regularly watched games at Nou Camp as a child.
From BBC ● Aug. 9, 2026
An engineer from the Ettumanoor municipality was supervising the disposal of the carcass.
From "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy
Last month, he introduced the “Protection From Mass Surveillance Ordinance,” which doesn’t mention Flock by name but would pull funding from municipalities that continue to use the company’s cameras.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 17, 2026
Almost 100 municipalities in the U.S. have ended their Flock contracts in response to public outcry, including several in Texas, such as Bandera and Hood County.
From Salon ● Sep. 6, 2026
It said the board is contemplating alternative uses for manufacturing plants in the German municipalities Emden, Zwickau, Hanover and Neckarsulm as current capacity surpasses demand by over 500,000 units.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 4, 2026
Water rationing has been in effect in several municipalities since early August, according to news reports.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 4, 2026
It begins with shock, followed by rage—because cruising ahead of her is a water supply truck owned by one of the various underperforming water municipalities.
From "Dry" by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
