Word.ws English Dictionary

town and gown

town and gown noun: 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.

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
    • Everybody was quiet now, both town and gown; the students were at their dinners and so were the burghers.1919, Booth Tarkington, chapter 14, in Ramsey Milholland

town and gown meaning in Bengali

town and gown in Bengali

একদিকে কোনো শহর

Examples of town and gown in a sentence

  • In Cambridge nobody heeded the disturbance—it was a Town and Gown row.1856, William Makepeace Thackeray, “Codlingsby”, in Burlesques:
  • [T]he first archives of this University were burned in the ‘Town and Gown’ riots of 1381 by the Townsmen.1920, Arthur Quiller-Couch, On The Art of Reading, Lecture V—"On Reading for Examinations"

Questions about town and gown

What does town and gown mean?
Town and gown means 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.
What is town and gown in Bengali?
Town and gown in Bengali is একদিকে কোনো শহর. See Town and gown meaning in Bengali.
How do you use town and gown in a sentence?
In Cambridge nobody heeded the disturbance—it was a Town and Gown row.
What part of speech is town and gown?
Town and gown is a noun.

Words near town and gown in the dictionary

  1. towlines
  2. towmaster
  3. towmasters
  4. town
  5. Town 'n' Country
  6. town and gown
  7. town ball
  8. town belt
  9. town belts
  10. town bicycle
  11. town bicycles

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: town and gown (page history and authors); town and gown (Bengali Wiktionary) (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-town and gown.ogg.

Cite this entry: “town and gown.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/town_and_gown. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.