town and gown
- noun
:
relación entre la universidad y la comunidad
- The university set up a liaison office to address town and gown issues more effectively.
Examples
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The town and gown dynamic has always been complex.
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Efforts to improve town and gown relations included joint festivals and discussion panels.
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Protests sometimes arise from misunderstandings between town and gown in university cities.
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Many events aim to bridge the gap between town and gown.
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The town and gown relationship in this city has improved greatly with new initiatives for student engagement.
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Many events are organized each year to strengthen the town and gown connection between the university and local residents.
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Tensions often arise in the town and gown dynamic, especially during the busy graduation season.
Synonyms
5
2.8
The way an organization talks and works with local people
How Cooperative
214
2.7
443
2.5
2
4.2
509
3.2
135
4.1
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is compositionally built from 'town' and 'gown' so a learner who knows 'gown' as the university community can infer it concerns the town versus university groups; however, 'gown' in this sense is specialized/archaic and the conventionalized meaning focusing on the relationship (often tension or cooperation) is not fully predictable from the parts. Therefore a B1 learner may guess the participants but would likely need exposure to extract the specific relational/idiomatic nuance.
Etymology
Town and gown comes from old university towns where the local people were the town and the students and teachers wore long robes called the gown. Because these two groups often had different rules and sometimes clashed or worked together, the phrase now means 'the relationship between a university and the local people'.