Word.ws English Dictionary

second city

second city noun: the second-most important city of a country or region.

Noun

second city (plural second cities)

  1. The second-most important city of a country or region.
    • Kharkiv is Ukraine's second city.

Proper noun capitalized: Second City

the Second City

  1. Nickname for the city of Chicago, Illinois, in the United States of America.
    Synonyms:
    Windy City

Synonyms of second city

Forms of second city

pluralsecond cities

Origin of second city

So named because Chicago was the second largest city in the United States (after New York City) from 1889 to 1984.

Questions about second city

What does second city mean?
Second city means the second-most important city of a country or region.
What part of speech is second city?
Second city can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of second city?
The plural of second city is second cities.

Words near second city in the dictionary

  1. second chance
  2. second chances
  3. second childhood
  4. second childhoods
  5. second cities
  6. second city
  7. second class
  8. Second Cold War
  9. second coming
  10. second comings
  11. second conditional

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: second city (page history and authors); Second 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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Sapaa-Second City.wav.

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