BOROUGH

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does borough mean? 

• BOROUGH (noun)
  The noun BOROUGH has 2 senses:

1. one of the administrative divisions of a large city

2. an English town that forms the constituency of a member of parliament

  Familiarity information: BOROUGH used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BOROUGH (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

One of the administrative divisions of a large city

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Hypernyms ("borough" is a kind of...):

administrative district; administrative division; territorial division (a district defined for administrative purposes)

Instance hyponyms:

Greenwich (a borough of Greater London on the Thames; zero degrees of longitude runs through Greenwich; time is measured relative to Greenwich Mean Time)

City of Westminster; Westminster (a borough of Greater London on the Thames; contains Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey)

Bronx; Brooklyn (a borough of New York City)

Manhattan (one of the five boroughs of New York City)

Queens; Staten Island (a borough of New York City)

Sense 2

Meaning:

An English town that forms the constituency of a member of parliament

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Hypernyms ("borough" is a kind of...):

town; townsfolk; townspeople (the people living in a municipality smaller than a city)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "borough"):

burgh (a borough in Scotland)

pocket borough (a sparsely populated borough in which all or most of the land is owned by a single family)

rotten borough (an English parliamentary constituency with few electors)

 Context examples 

When Sir Thomas comes, I dare say he will be in for some borough, but there has been nobody to put him in the way of doing anything yet.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Then followed the history and rise of the ancient and respectable family, in the usual terms; how it had been first settled in Cheshire; how mentioned in Dugdale, serving the office of high sheriff, representing a borough in three successive parliaments, exertions of loyalty, and dignity of baronet, in the first year of Charles II, with all the Marys and Elizabeths they had married; forming altogether two handsome duodecimo pages, and concluding with the arms and motto:—Principal seat, Kellynch Hall, in the county of Somerset, and Sir Walter's handwriting again in this finale:—Heir presumptive, William Walter Elliot, Esq., great grandson of the second Sir Walter.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)