Townie

/ˈtaʊni/ · noun

Meaning

(UK, US) A person living in a university area who is not associated with the university..

Definitions by Sense

1. (UK, US) A person living in a university area who is not associated with the university.
2. (UK) A person who has moved from a town or city to a rural area. Especially, one who is perceived not to have adopted rural ways.
3. (UK) A person familiar with the town (urbanised centre of a city) and with going out on the town; a street-wise person.
4. (UK, derogatory) A chav.
5. (US) A working-class citizen in a metropolitan area.
6. (UK, Australia, New Zealand, informal) A person who lives in a city or town, or has an urban outlook.

Example Sentences

Professional gamblers have a cushy racket in college football because old grads and even townies of college localities are sentimental bettors and easy to separate from their money.

School is an ivory tower on the hill; it nestles in the gated groves of academe. It’s residents do not mix with “townies.”

In Spike Lee's movie School Daze you play a townie who's very hostile to the college students from out of town.

[Hamlet] was only repeating the phrase of an ordinary English rustic when jeering at a “townie”—whom he suspected of being a gutter-snipe—that “He don’t know a hawk from a hernshaw”.

From being a born-and-bred townie from north London, to a 36-year-old part-time farmer and full-time businessman is no mean achievement.

The term cockney originally meant cock’s egg or misshapen egg such as a young hen might lay, in other words a lily-livered townie as opposed to a strong countryman.

Bobby Wick stormed through the tents of his Company, rallying, rebuking, mildly, as is consistent with the Regulations, chaffing the faint-hearted [...] comforting the panic-stricken with rude speech, and more than once tending the dying who had no friends — the men without "townies"[.]

Here I parted with my fellow-townies, whose home shed at Millhouses covers fields where I played as a child.

Synonyms for townie

Antonyms for townie

Related Words

Word Forms

• townies
• townee

Usage Notes

Choose a synonym only when it preserves the intended meaning, tone, and grammar of the full sentence.

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