townie

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   A person living in a university area who is not associated with the university.

   • Professional gamblers have a cushy racket in college football because old grads and even townies of college localities are sentimental bettors and easy to separate from their money.
   • School is an ivory tower on the hill; it nestles in the gated groves of academe. It’s residents do not mix with “townies.”
   • In Spike Lee's movie School Daze you play a townie who's very hostile to the college students from out of town.
2. 2

   A person who has moved from a town or city to a rural area. Especially, one who is…

   A person who has moved from a town or city to a rural area. Especially, one who is perceived not to have adopted rural ways.

   • [Hamlet] was only repeating the phrase of an ordinary English rustic when jeering at a “townie”—whom he suspected of being a gutter-snipe—that “He don’t know a hawk from a hernshaw”.
   • From being a born-and-bred townie from north London, to a 36-year-old part-time farmer and full-time businessman is no mean achievement.
   • The term cockney originally meant cock’s egg or misshapen egg such as a young hen might lay, in other words a lily-livered townie as opposed to a strong countryman.
3. 3

   A person familiar with the town (urbanised centre of a city) and with going out on the…

   A person familiar with the town (urbanised centre of a city) and with going out on the town; a street-wise person.

4. ›+ 4 more definitionsshow fewer

   1. 4

      A chav.

   2. 5

      A working-class citizen in a metropolitan area.

   3. 6

      A person who lives in a city or town, or has an urban outlook.

      • Here I parted with my fellow-townies, whose home shed at Millhouses covers fields where I played as a child.
      • The modern Aussie is a townie through and through. Australia is the least densely populated country on earth; it is also among the most highly urbanised.
   4. 7

      A person from Charlestown, Massachusetts, (especially) a working-class person of Irish…

      A person from Charlestown, Massachusetts, (especially) a working-class person of Irish American heritage.

      • Racial isolation is so strong that in the early 1970s there were only 388 blacks among the 38,488 residents of South Boston, and only 76 among the 15,353 “Townies” of Charlestown.
      • By fall 1974, however, new impulses broke through and on September 25, three hundred Townies organized the Charlestown branch of ROAR

The neighborhood

• antonymcocky ()antonym(s) of “person who lives in a city or town or has an urban outlook”
• neighbortowner
• neighborbarnie