Word.ws English Dictionary

bourg

/bɜː(ɹ)/

bourg is the obsolete form of burgh.

bourg is the obsolete form of borough.

Meaning of burgh

Noun

burgh (plural burghs)

  1. (Sussex) a small mound, often used in reference to tumuli (mostly restricted to place names).
  2. (UK) a borough or chartered town (now only used as an official subdivision in Scotland).
    • With fruitless pains / Might one like me 'now' visit many a tract / Which, in his youth, he trod, and trod again, / A lone pedestrian with a scanty freight, / Wished-for, or welcome, wheresoe'er he came— / Among the tenantry of thorpe and vill; / Or straggling burgh, of ancient charter proud, / And...1815, William Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book Eighth, The Parsonage, lines 95-104, http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww405.html

See all 3 meanings of burgh

Meaning of borough

Noun

borough (plural boroughs)

  1. A town having a municipal corporation and certain traditional rights.
  2. An administrative district in some cities, e.g., London.
    • The highway to the East Coast which ran through the borough of Ebbfield had always been a main road and even now, despite the vast garages, the pylons and the gaily painted factory glasshouses which had sprung up beside it, there still remained an occasional trace of past cultures.1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 7, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC
  3. (New-York, US) An administrative unit of a city which, under most circumstances according to state or national law, would be considered a larger or more powerful entity.
  4. Other similar administrative units in cities and states in various parts of the world.
  5. A district in Alaska having powers similar to a county.
  6. (UK, historical) An association of men who gave pledges or sureties to the king for the good behavior of each other.

See all 9 meanings of borough

Proper noun capitalized: Bourg

Bourg (plural Bourgs)

  1. A surname from French.
  2. A topographical surname from Anglo-Norman for someone who lived in a fortified place.

Forms of bourg

Noun
pluralbourgs
Proper noun
pluralBourgs
alternative formBurgh
alternative formBurke
alternative formBourke
alternative formBourg
alternative formde Bourg
alternative formBurgo
alternative formde Burgo
alternative formde Búrca

Origin of bourg

From the Anglo-Norman word burgh.

Phrases with bourg

Questions about bourg

What does bourg mean?
Bourg means a surname from French.
What is bourg the obsolete form of?
Bourg is the obsolete form of burgh.
What part of speech is bourg?
Bourg is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce bourg?
Bourg is pronounced /bɜː(ɹ)/.

Words near bourg in the dictionary

  1. bourds
  2. bourek
  3. bourekas
  4. bourette
  5. Bourey
  6. bourg
  7. Bourg-en-Bresse
  8. Bourg-Saint-Maurice
  9. Bourgault
  10. Bourgaults
  11. bourgeois

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bourg (page history and authors); Bourg (page history and authors); burgh (page history and authors); borough (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “bourg.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bourg. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.