Word.ws English Dictionary

open city

open city noun: a city which has announced (during wartime) that it has abandoned all defensive efforts, generally in the event of its imminent capture.

Noun

open city (plural open cities)

  1. (international law) A city which has announced (during wartime) that it has abandoned all defensive efforts, generally in the event of its imminent capture.
    • “You needn’t worry about bombs, by the way. Dresden is an open city. It is undefended, and contains no war industries or troop concentrations of any importance.”1969 March 31, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five […] (A Seymour Lawrence Book), New York, N.Y.: Delacorte Press, →OCLC, page 127
  2. (dictatorships) A city that (during peacetime) is not heavily restricted regarding ingress and egress because it does not contain militarily sensitive facilities or extensive defense industrial plant.
    Antonyms:
    closed city

Antonyms of open city

Forms of open city

pluralopen cities

Questions about open city

What does open city mean?
Open city means a city which has announced (during wartime) that it has abandoned all defensive efforts, generally in the event of its imminent capture.
What part of speech is open city?
Open city is a noun.
What is the plural of open city?
The plural of open city is open cities.

Words near open city in the dictionary

  1. open circuit voltages
  2. open circuits
  3. open circulatory system
  4. open circulatory systems
  5. open cities
  6. open city
  7. open class
  8. open classroom
  9. open classrooms
  10. open cluster
  11. open clusters

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: open 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: “open city.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/open_city. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.