townifyv.
/ˈtaʊnᵻfʌɪ/, U.S. /ˈtaʊnəˌfaɪ/ colloquial.
transitive. To cause to resemble a town; to make urban in character.
ΘΚΠ
society > inhabiting and dwelling > inhabited place > district in relation to human occupation > town as opposed to country > [verb (transitive)] > urbanize
townify1798
urbanize1866
1798 S. T. Coleridge Coll. Lett. (1956) I. 428 All neat and comfortable like a rural Place cut into Shapes & townified for the citizens who come here from Altona and Hamburg..on Saturdays.
1895 Cheshire Observer 2 Nov. 5/5 Heswall was still a village, and when it was last sought to ‘townify’ it by making sewage works the place was made less healthy and more expensive.
1943 Times 1 Jan. 5/5 He deprecated the further building of huge barrack-like secondary schools in big centres, thus townifying great numbers of children, including those from the countryside round about.
2011 Spectator (Nexis) 2 June 19 What happens when wealthy metropolitan types decamp to the countryside and try to, well, townify it?
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2014; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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