village Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. noun a community of people smaller than a town
    settlement; small town.
  2. noun a settlement smaller than a town
    hamlet.
  3. noun a mainly residential district of Manhattan; `the Village' became a home for many writers and artists in the 20th century
    Greenwich Village.

WordNet

Vil"lage noun
Etymology
F., fr. L. villaticus belonging to a country house or villa. See Villa, and cf. Villatic.
Definitions
  1. A small assemblage of houses in the country, less than a town or city. Syn. -- Village, Hamlet, Town, City. In England, a hamlet denotes a collection of houses, too small to have a parish church. A village has a church, but no market. A town has both a market and a church or churches. A city is, in the legal sense, an incorporated borough town, which is, or has been, the place of a bishop's see. In the United States these distinctions do not hold.

Webster 1913