Word.ws English Dictionary

chocolate city

chocolate city noun: a city with a predominantly African American population.

Noun

chocolate city (plural chocolate cities)

  1. (US, informal) A city with a predominantly African American population.
    • There's a lot of chocolate cities around / We got Newark, we got Gary / Someone told me we got L.A. / And we're working on Atlanta / But you're the capital C.C.1975, “Chocolate City”, in Chocolate City, performed by George Clinton of the band Parliament
    • "This city will be chocolate at the end of the day. This city will be a majority African American city. It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans no other way; it wouldn't be New Orleans." … It's part of our culture to talk about chocolate cities.2006 January 20, Ray Nagin, Chocolate City speech
  2. A city known for or associated with chocolate production.
    • Bruges is a chocolate city par excellence. The city has more than 50 passionate chocolatiers.2013 August 9, “A Visit to Bruges (Belgium) - Part I”, in The Kitchen Lioness

Proper noun capitalized: Chocolate City

Chocolate City

  1. (US, informal, Washington, D.C.) Nickname for Washington, D.C.: the capital of the United States.
  2. (US, informal) A nickname for a city with a predominantly African American population.

Examples of chocolate city in a sentence

  • Can the culture of a chocolate city — its heritage and its heart — remain when its black residents have moved on?2018 April 11, “Art and Soul: Conserving the Culture of Chocolate Cities”, in American University Radio:
  • I’m from the Midwest, from a “chocolate city” at the time I grew up.2022, LA Times, Letters to the Editor:

Forms of chocolate city

pluralchocolate cities

Origin of chocolate city

From chocolate + city.

From chocolate + city, in reference to the large African American population. Popularized in the 1970s and by the 1975 funk album Chocolate City by Parliament.

Questions about chocolate city

What does chocolate city mean?
Chocolate city means a city with a predominantly African American population.
How do you use chocolate city in a sentence?
Can the culture of a chocolate city — its heritage and its heart — remain when its black residents have moved on?
What part of speech is chocolate city?
Chocolate city can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of chocolate city?
The plural of chocolate city is chocolate cities.

Words near chocolate city in the dictionary

  1. chocolate chippies
  2. chocolate chippy
  3. chocolate chips
  4. chocolate chocolate chip
  5. chocolate cities
  6. chocolate city
  7. chocolate concrete
  8. chocolate crackle
  9. chocolate crackles
  10. chocolate cyst
  11. chocolate cysts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chocolate city (page history and authors); Chocolate City (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.

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