municipality

Etymology

Borrowed from French municipalité (Edmund Burke), from municipal + -ité, from Latin municipalis, from municipium (“free city, township”), from municeps (“citizen of a free city or township”), from mūnus (“duty, service”) + -ceps (“taker, catcher”). Equivalent to municipal + -ity.

noun

1. A district with a government that typically encloses no other governed districts; a borough, city, or incorporated town or village.
2. The governing body of such a district.
   From another point of view, it was a place without a soul. The well-to-do had hearts of stone; the rich were brutally bumptious; the Press, the Municipality, all the public men, were ridiculously, vaingloriously self-satisfied. 1918, W. B. Maxwell, chapter 22, in The Mirror and the Lamp
3. (politics) In Mexico and other Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries, second-level administrative divisions that may house one or more cities or towns whose head of government may be called mayors or, in Mexico, municipal presidents.