town-and-gown

Noun

town and gown (uncountable)

1. (UK, capitalized, idiomatic, sometimes) On the one hand, the members of the city, borough, or similar community near a university and, on the other hand, the students and faculty of the university itself, especially when understood as rivals in a state of tension or conflict.
   • [H]owls, curses, flights of brickbats, stones shivering windows, groans of wounded men, cries of frightened females, cheers of either contending party as it charged the enemy from Carfax to Trumpington Street, proclaimed that the battle was at its height. In Berlin they would have said it was a...1856, William Makepeace Thackeray, “Codlingsby”, in Burlesques