city hall
34
2.2
- noun
- /ˈsɪti hɔl/
- US
:
ayuntamiento
- The residents attended the meeting at city hall to voice their concerns about the new policies.
- front of city hall
- church and city hall
For six months, I function like a journalist, like I'm covering City Hall kicking butt.
- For six months, I function like a journalist, like I'm covering City Hall kicking butt.
- You know, you premiere this movie at town at the City Hall.
- And my dad said, I want you to come down to City Hall with me.
- I called for the evacuation of police headquarters, City Hall, the UN, the Empire State Building.
- But if I'm just an average person in Los Angeles, what goes on corruption at City Hall matters to me.
- But to those folks, I would say, I know coming from somebody who then is in City Hall, it's easy to say, well, nothing will change.
- Now, in order to make that happen, City Hall had to dispossess many of these Vietnamese refugee shopkeepers, including my parents.
- But what I do know is that City Hall gave the other independents the names, the numbers and everything.
- I mean, you know, come to come to downtown down to City Hall Plaza this weekend.
Examples
-
Finally, after a long sick leave, he returned to city hall, hobbling on crutches.
Fiction book (2000) -
Sheriff, several federal agents were seen entering city hall - about an hour ago.
-
It's right there in that City Hall main room.
-
And people in City Hall thought, well, we're the problem.
-
That was on the way to city hall.
-
I work late at city hall, and I walk home in the dark.
Fiction book (1992) -
We live right here at the City Hall of Atlanta.
-
We only went to city hall to expedite the process.
-
In a statement from city hall, the mayor's office was only able to offer a vague description of the two suspects.
-
At the city hall, two men stood beside a car, gazing around anxiously.
Fiction book (2000)
Synonyms
30
2.3
A building where government offices are
14
1.5
A building where local government offices work and meet the public
14
1.0
A place where government workers do official work for the public
A building where local government works and holds public meetings
How Official
449
3.5
19
2.8
4
3.7
- US
34
2.2
- US
64
1.8
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a building containing the main administrative offices of a municipal government' is directly derived from combining 'city' (urban municipality) with 'hall' (a public building or large room), i.e., a hall belonging to the city. This compositional pattern is common across languages and in English naming of public institutions, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will readily infer the intended meaning.
Etymology
City hall comes from the old idea of a hall where town leaders met to run the town, and the word city shows it was the town's hall. So city hall means the building where the 'city government' does its 'official business'.