borough

▪ I. borough
    (ˈbʌrəʊ, ˈbʌrə)
    Forms: 1 burᵹ, buruᵹ, 1–3 burh, 2 burch, bure(g)h, (burehg), beriȝ, 2–3 buruh, 3 burrh (Orm.), burwe, buri, 3–4 burȝ, buruȝ, borh, borȝ, boruȝ, boru, 4 burw, burȝe, borȝ(e, bourȝ, borou, borwȝ, borwgh, borw(e, borgh(e, 4–5 burghe, 4–6 (also Sc. 7–9) burgh, borogh, 4–7 borowe, 5 burwgh, borowgh, burwhe, borugh(e, burwe, bourg, 5–6 bourgh, 5–7 burrow(e, 6 borrowe, (bourg), burow, 6–7 boroughe, 6–8 burrough, (7 burrowghe, 8 borrough), 6– borough. dat. sing. 1 byriᵹ, burᵹe, 2 birie, berie, 3 biri, burie, buri.
    [Common Teut.: OE. burᵹ, burh = OFris. burch, OS. burg (MDu. burch, borch, Du. burg), OHG. burug (MHG. burc(g-), mod.G. burg), ON. (Sw., Da.) borg, Goth. baurgs:—OTeut. *burg-s str. fem. App. f. same root as OTeut. *berg-an str. vb. ‘to shelter’: see bergh v.; but the phonology is not quite clear. In German and ON. the word is recorded chiefly in the primary sense of ‘fortress, castle’, but there are traces of the sense of ‘town, civic community’, which is found in Goth. and OE., and may therefore be assumed to have been developed in OTeut. Of the immense variety of spellings current in ME., burrough became the prevalent one in early mod.Eng., but was subsequently displaced by borough in England and Ireland, while the form established in Scotland was burgh, q.v. The Danish borg and Fr. bourg have also been used by historical writers in special senses. See also burrow, berry n.³
    Like other fem. consonantal stems, the OE. burᵹ had vowel change (byriᵹ) in gen. and dat. sing., and nom. acc. plural, which survived in dat. sing. to the 13th c. This dative, biri, berie, buri, was also at times used for the nominative; whence the modern Bury, -bury, in place-names.]
    † 1. a. A fortress, castle, or citadel. Obs. (Unequivocal instances of this sense are rare, even in OE. In quot. 1394 the word denotes simply a large building; and 1425 is quite doubtful.)

c 820 Kentish Gloss. in Wr.-Wülcker Voc. 63 Ad arcem et ad mœnia, to burᵹe and to wealle. a 1000 O.E. Chron. an. 920 Eadweard cyning..ᵹetimbrede þa burᵹ. [1394 P. Pl. Crede 118 We buldeþ a burwȝ a brod and a large. c 1425 Wyntoun Cron. viii. xiii. 125 Castellis, Bowrrowys and Fortalys.]

    † b. A court, a manor-house. Hence prob. in place-names, e.g. Edgeware Bury, Hertingford Bury.

c 1175 Cott. Hom. 231 And þider ᵹeclepien alle his under⁓þeod þat hi bi éne féce to his curt (berie) come sceolde. c 1250 Gen. & Ex. 2257 He ledde hem alle to Iosepes biri. [1576 Lambarde Peramb. Kent (1826) 377 Bury, or Biry..was used for a court, or place of assembly.]

    † 2. a. A fortified town; a town possessing municipal organization (cf. OE. burhwaru body of citizens); more generally, any inhabited place larger than a village. (The three notions were originally co-extensive. When the word became restricted to the mod. sense (3) its wider sense passed to town.) Obs.

c 893 K. ælfred Oros. ii. viii. §1 Hie binnan þære byriᵹ up eodon..ond þa burᵹ [10th c. MS. burh] mid ealle awestan. c 1000 Ags. Gosp. Matt. xxi. 17 Of þære byriᵹ. c 1160 Hatton G. ibid., Of þare beriᵹ. c 1175 Cott. Hom. 225 Hi woldan wercen ane burch · and enne stepel binnan þara birie. c 1205 Lay. 218 He makede ane heȝe burh. c 1250 Gen. & Ex. 1053 Ȝet sat Loth at ðe burȝes gate. c 1325 E.E. Allit. P. B. 1666, I haf bigged Babiloyne, burȝ alþerrychest. 1480 Caxton Chron. Eng. v. (1520) 43 b/2 Cytees, and borughs, and townes that the Saxons hadde destroyed. 1483 Cath. Angl. 48, A Burghe burgus.

    † b. fig. Cf. burrow shelter, which Feltham may have confounded with borough.

1627 Feltham Resolves i. lii. Wks. (1677) 82 The mind is then shut up in the Burrough of the body.

    3. a. A town possessing a municipal corporation and special privileges conferred by royal charter (hence the sovereign is said to create a borough). Also a town which sends representatives to parliament. (A municipal borough often differs in territorial extent from the parliamentary borough of the same name.) The word is commonly restricted to towns which do not possess the more dignified title of city. For the Scottish uses, see burgh.
    (Early examples are necessarily not distinct in sense from the preceding.)

[c 1380 Sir Ferumb. 283 Be it castel, burgh, outher Cite. 1398 Trevisa Barth. De P.R. xiv. ii. (1495) 466 Aournyd wyth many grete cytees and borughes.] 1512 Act. 4 Hen. VIII, xi, The Bourgh of Lymyngton with thappurtenaunces. 1574 tr. Littleton's Tenures 35 a, The aunciente townes called Boroughes bee the moste auncient and eldest Townes that bee within England. 1587 Fleming Contn. Holinsh. III. 1276/1 To this man King Henrie the third..did grant that his towne of Wigan should be a burrow. 1652 Proc. Parliament No. 34. 2083 A list of the Burroughs that have since assented to the Union. 1718 Free-thinker No. 66. 84 Your Counties, and your Burroughs..send you into Parliament. 1738 Hist. Crt. Excheq. ii. 20 Several of the Demesne Lands were given to Burroughs. 1827 Hallam Const. Hist. (1876) III. xiii. 38 Edward VI created fourteen boroughs. 1845 Stephen Laws Eng. II. 357 A ‘borough’ is properly a town or city represented in parliament, although the term has occasionally (as in the Municipal Corporation Act) a wider signification.

    b. the Borough: esp. that of Southwark. Cf. 5.

[1559 Mirr. Mag., Jack Cade xxi, To Southwarke borow where it lay a night.] 1797 Ann. Reg. 28 A dreadful fire broke out yesterday morning in the High-Street in the Borough. 1886 Daily News 18 Dec. 6/2 Fire in the Borough.

    c. to own a borough, to buy a borough: to possess or to buy the power of controlling the election of a member of parliament for a borough. close borough, pocket borough, a borough ‘owned’ by some person. rotten borough: one of the boroughs which, before the passing of the English Reform Bill in 1832, were found to have so decayed as no longer to have a real constituency.

1771 Smollett Humph. Cl. (1815) 246 The practice of buying boroughs, and canvassing for votes. 1812 Sir F. Burdett in Examiner 12 Oct. 656/1 They will no more part with their rotten boroughs. 1817 G. Rose Diaries (1860) I. 33 To suppress what were called the rotten boroughs. 1867 Morley Burke 104 Wilkes proposed to disfranchise the rotten boroughs.

    d. An incorporated town or village; a town having a warden or chief burgess as its official head. U.S.

1718 in Pennsylvania Col. Rec. III. 58 The said town might be erected into a Borough by a Charter of Incorporacon. 1854 Stat. State Connecticut 329 The wardens and a majority of the burgesses of any such borough, may, in like manner, authorize such an alley to be kept at any place in any such city or borough. 1925 G. P. Krapp Eng. Lang. in Amer. I. iii. 178 Now that the word Manhattan has been legalized as the name of the Borough of Manhattan, it is possible it may become colorlessly official and lose some of its romantic glamour.

    e. (a) In New Zealand, a village, township, or town having a special governing body called a borough council. (b) In New South Wales, a municipal corporation of not less than 1,000 inhabitants and not more than 9 square miles in area. In Victoria, such a municipality of not less than 300 inhabitants.

1865 R. P. Whitworth Baillière's Vict. Gazetteer 59 Brunswick is a borough township,..in the..electoral district of E. Bourke boroughs. 1867 Acts N.Z. 31 Vict. No. 24 §29 There shall be in and for each single borough a council consisting of nine councillors. 1874 Silver's Handbk. Australia & N.Z. (ed. 2) 131 At the end of 1871 there were sixty-four corporate towns and boroughs, containing within their municipal limits about one-half the population. A borough must not have an area of more than nine square miles.

    f. Any of the five administrative divisions of New York City (see quot. 1948).

1897 Independent 11 Mar. 306/1 The Charter provides..that the Borough of Brooklyn may have a professionally conducted school system. 1948 Chicago Tribune 18 Mar. iii. 4/5 The jubilee commemorates the 50th anniversary of the consolidation of the boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens and Staten Island into New York City. 1970 N.Y. Times Encycl. Almanac 222/2 Thus the city today consists of five boroughs, each a county in its own right: Manhattan is New York County; Brooklyn is Kings County; Staten Island is Richmond County; and Queens and the Bronx bear the same county as borough names. 1986 New Yorker 3 Feb. 90/3 On January 8th,..the borough president of Queens, who is also the Democratic boss of that borough..had spent much of the day at City Hall.

    g. An administrative district of Greater London in which services, etc., are provided by a local authority. Cf. metropolitan a. 2 a.

1899 Act 62 & 63 Vict. c. 14 § 1 The whole of the administrative county of London, exclusive of the City of London, shall be divided into metropolitan boroughs (in this Act referred to as boroughs). 1963 Act 11 & 12 Eliz. II c. 33 §1 ii. 1 The boundary between the London boroughs numbered 6 and 17 respectively..in the existing metropolitan borough of Woolwich shall be the..centre of the navigable channel of the River Thames at low water. 1976 Times 21 May 2/5 Dr. Douglas Chambers, the coroner, asked whether it might not be desirable for checks to be made in other London boroughs.

    h. In Alaska, a territorial and administrative division corresponding to a county elsewhere in the United States.

1956 Fairbanks (Alaska) Daily News-Miner 6 Feb. 7 All local government powers shall be vested in boroughs and cities. The State may delegate taxing powers to boroughs and cities only. 1966 R. A. Cooley Alaska viii. 103 The creation of new units of government, the boroughs, has brought in its wake yet another series of problems... The boroughs are only now coming into existence. At the present time there are nine of them. 1974 Encycl. Brit. Macropædia I. 413/1 State and borough governments have difficulty in providing the usual range of services because of the limited extent of the economy.

    † 4. At Richmond, Yorkshire, and perhaps other northern old corporate towns: A property held by burgage, and formerly qualifying for a vote for members of parliament. Cf. borough-holder.

1715 Lond. Gaz. No. 5296/4 A Very large Burrough, standing in..the Market-place of Richmond in Yorkshire, consisting of three Dwelling Houses, and two large shops.

    † 5. In 14th to 16th c. sometimes used for the suburbs of a city, the portion lying outside the wall. Cf. contemporary use of F. bourg.

c 1380 Sir Ferumb. 1767 Til þay wer passed þe borwgh. c 1450 Merlin xviii. (1877) 291 Kynge Arans hadde all day assailed the Castell of Arondell, but..nothinge thei wonne, saf only thei hadde brente the bourgh withoute. 1523 Ld. Berners Froiss. I. cxc. 225 The gate..bytwene the..borowe and the cytie. [At Oxford, the suburb of St. Clement's, east of the Cherwell, is traditionally called ‘the Borough’.]

    6. Archæological and historical uses. a. Adopted to translate Gr. δῆµος and L. pagus in the sense of township or district.

a 1747 Abp. Potter in T. Mitchell Aristoph. (1822) II. 160 The Athenians..delivered in their names, together with the names of their father and borough. 1770 Langhorne Plutarch (1879) I. 81/2 Numa..divided the country into..portions, which he called pagi, or boroughs. 1850 Maurice Mor. & Met. Philos. iii, Socrates was born in a little burgh of Attica.

    b. Eng. Hist. in various arch. forms: used by some writers on the Old English period. See also borg, bourg, burg, burgh.

1872 E. Robertson Hist. Ess. Introd. 11 The Burh, of burgh of early days. 1875 Stubbs Const. Hist. I. v. 92 The ‘burh’ of the Anglo-Saxon period was simply a more strictly organised form of the township. Ibid. 93 note, The five Danish burhs..had not only special privileges of their own, but a common organization.

    7. Comb. and attrib. † a. Obs. law terms used Hist. by writers of 16th c. onwards; most recent writers retain the OE. spelling: burgh-bote [OE. burh-bót; cf. boot n.¹], a tax for the repair of fortresses; burgh-breche [OE. burh-bryce; cf. breach], close-breaking, burglary; burgh-mote, borough-moot [OE. burh-ᵹemót; cf. moot], the judicial assembly of a borough.

1647 N. Bacon Hist. Disc. xxxiii. 82 Power to charge one another with the maintenance of the Fortifications by an imposition called Burghbote. 1844 Lingard Anglo-Sax. Ch. (1858) I. vi. 221 Burgh-bot, or contribution towards the maintenance of the burghs or places of defence. 1387 Trevisa Higden Rolls Ser. II. 95 Burghbreche a Frensche blesmure de court ou de cloys. 1598 Tate in Gutch Coll. Cur. I. 4 Borrowbreach is interpreted Civitas rupta. 1641 Termes de la Ley 44 Burbreach..trespasses done in Citie or Borough against the peace. a 1400 Vsages of Wynchestre in Eng. Gilds 350 At þe borghmot of seynt mychel. 1747 Carte Hist. Eng. I. 311 A court or burghmote was held thrice a year for determining all causes between the inhabitants. 1872 E. Robertson Hist. Ess. 130 The later county court of the Vicecomes or Sheriff..held three times a year as a Burh-gemote in the leading burgh of the district. 1880 Antiquary June 255 The ancient Burghmote horn of Ipswich.

    † b. Other obs. compounds: borough-folk (OE. burh-folc), the people of a town; burgh-kenning, coined by Stow as an etymological rendering of barbican (!); burh-were, pl. -weren [OE. burhwaru, -ware, -waran], the people or community of a town, the townsmen.

c 1200 Trin. Coll. Hom. 89 Þat burh folc hihten þe heȝe strete. c 1250 Gen. & Ex. 1853 Emor..And his burgefolc fellin in wi. 1598 Stow Surv. xxxiii. (1603) 304 A Burgh-Kening or Watch Tower of the Cittie. c 1205 Lay. 28368 Iherden þa burh-weren [1275 borh-men] hu hit was al ifaren. Ibid. 28392 Hi bi-hehte þere burȝe-were auer mare freo laȝe.

    c. attrib. and Comb. in sense 3, as borough-accountant, borough-architect, borough-bailiff, borough-surveyor; borough council [council 10], a local council which conducts the affairs of a borough; borough court, a court of limited jurisdiction held in a borough by special privilege; borough-rate, a rate levied by the municipality of a borough; borough sessions, a court held by the recorder of a borough, usually quarterly, established under the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835. Also with reference to parliamentary representation, as borough-constituency, borough-election, borough faction, borough-influence, borough-patron, borough-politics, borough-slave, borough-traitor, borough-tyrant, borough-voter, etc.; borough-jobber, borough-jobbing = borough-monger, -mongering;

1812 Crabbe Tales, Patron 1 A *borough-bailiff, who to law was trained.

1866 Bright Sp. Irel. 2 Nov. (1876) 193 Wherever the *borough constituencies are so small.

1879 Contemp. Rev. XXXIV. 695 One change is imperatively called for—the getting rid of the incubus of aldermen in the city and *borough councils. 1900 G. B. Shaw Let. 31 Oct. (1972) 189 Candidates for appointments should be examined by some public educational body entirely independent of the Borough Council. 1918 Existing Law Boroughs Penn. xxvi. 220 The borough council may fill any vacancy in their body until the municipal election next following. a 1974 R. Crossman Diaries III. 484 As a result of the [Maud] proposals, 124 county and borough councils and over 1,000 district councils would disappear. 1985 Whitaker's Almanack 1986 620/1 The Greater London Council and the six metropolitan county councils are to be abolished and most of their functions made the responsibility of the existing borough and district councils.

1769 Blackstone Comm. Index, *Borough courts. 1959 Jowitt Dict. Eng. Law I. 266/2 Borough courts..are now of little importance, most business having been transferred..to the county court.

a 1797 H. Walpole Mem. Geo. II (1847) II. xi. 373 He would be no *borough-jobber.

1803 Bristed Pedest. Tour II. 345 Exaltation by the usual gradations of *borough-jobbing, of courtierizing, and a peerage.

1811 Edin. Rev. XVII. 258 Having..prohibited the sale of seats by *borough-patrons.

1863 H. Cox Instit. iii. ix. 730 Householders..paying poor-rates and *borough-rates.

1835 Act 5 & 6 Will. IV c. 76 §110 marg., Offenders committed to *Borough Sessions whose Jurisdiction is taken away to be tried in the adjoining County.

1813 Cobbett Pol. Reg. xxxiii. 81 Like a set of *borough-slaves, submitting to choose a second member at the dictation of Sir Francis Burdett.

▪ II. borough
    obs. form of burrow, rabbit-hole, mound, and shelter; and of brough.

Oxford English Dictionary