citizen

Meaning

  1. A resident of a city or town, especially one with legally recognized rights or duties.
  2. A legally recognized member of a state, with associated rights and obligations; a person considered in terms of this role.
  3. An inhabitant or occupant: a member of any place.
  4. A resident of the heavenly city or (later) of the kingdom of God: a Christian; a good Christian.
  5. A civilian, as opposed to a police officer, soldier, or member of some other specialized (usually state) group.
  6. (obsolete) An ordinary person, as opposed to nobles and landed gentry on one side and peasants, craftsmen, and laborers on the other.
  7. (capitalized, historical, usually) A term of address among supporters of the French Revolution in France or elsewhere; (later, dated) a term of address among socialists and communists.
  8. (figuratively) A notional inhabitant of a software system; an object or a software application.

Opposite of
alien, illegal alien, foreigner, illegal, outsider, stranger
Synonyms

national
B1
inhabitant
48k
subject
B1
people
A1
🧑‍🤝‍🧑
native
B2
civilian
C1
townsman
resident
C1
burgess
C2
citizenship
C2
populace
30k
denizen
villager
26k
burgher
inhabitants
C2
towner
crowd
B1
residents
C1
public
A2
freemen
dweller
45k
mass
B1
population
B2
townee

city people

town-bred

habitancy

bourgeois
C2
patrial
citizenry
civics
44k
class
A2
country
A1
family
A1
👪
folk
B2
habitant
human
A2
human being
humanity
B2
humankind
C2
indigenous
C2
man
A1
👨
mankind
B2
match
A2
middle class
nation
B1
subordinate
20k
townspeople
24k

city-bred

city slicker
Translations

citoyen
ciudadano
Bürger
cittadino
🏙️
burger
cidadão
Staatsbürger

πολίτης

ciutadà
citoyenne
staatsburger
vatandaş
súbdito
ciudadana
Frequency

B2
Pronounced as (IPA)
/ˈsɪtɪzən/
Etymology

Inherited from Middle English
citeseyn
Cognate with French
French
cité
In summary

From Middle English citeseyn, citezein, borrowed from Anglo-Norman citesain (“burgher; city-dweller”), citezein, etc., probably a variant of cithein under influence of deinzein (“denizen”), from Anglo-Norman and Old French citeain, etc. and citaien, citeien, etc. ("burgher"; modern French citoyen), from cité ("settlement; cathedral city, city"; modern French cité) + -ain or -ien (“-an, -ian”). See city and hewe.

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English