company town
company town noun: a town, city, or other municipality in which a single large business has a controlling influence over the economy and, sometimes, over the societal structure and the local government.
Noun
company town (plural company towns)
- A town, city, or other municipality in which a single large business has a controlling influence over the economy and, sometimes, over the societal structure and the local government.
- The workmen lived farther along the line, in a sort of company town, which at present greatly resembled a Western mining-camp, though ultimately it was to be a bungalow town.1917, Arthur B. Reeve, chapter 5, in The Treasure-Train
- Now here we have a company town depicted by our authority in the UMW [United Mine Workers] as one of the worst imaginable company towns, where the employer ran the schools, the local administration of justice, and even the churches.1946 May 29, Westbrook Pegler, “Fair Enough”, in Reading Eagle, page 4
Forms of company town
| plural | company towns |
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Questions about company town
- What does company town mean?
- Company town means a town, city, or other municipality in which a single large business has a controlling influence over the economy and, sometimes, over the societal structure and the local government.
- What part of speech is company town?
- Company town is a noun.
- What is the plural of company town?
- The plural of company town is company towns.
Words near company town in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: company town (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-company town.ogg.
Cite this entry: “company town.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/company_town. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.