SINCE 1828
company town
nounDefinition of company town
: a community that is dependent on one firm for all or most of the necessary services or functions of town life (such as employment, housing, and stores)
Examples of company town in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
The quintessential company town, named after an indigenous mineral, sprang up in increments of large plants and modest homes. — Los Angeles Times, "Trona High’s once-mighty Sandmen fight to keep football alive in wake of earthquakes," 28 Aug. 2019 Both games effectively take place in hermetically sealed, spacebound company towns. — Adi Robertson, The Verge, "System Shock 2 helped define survival horror — but it’s still in a league of its own," 11 Aug. 2019 Seattle’s blue-collar roots, first as a community of fishermen, boatwrights and lumber mills, and then as a Boeing company town, are long past. — Jason Buch, New York Times, "For Seattle’s Last Mobile Home Owners, the Clock Is Ticking," 21 July 2019 Is this the exciting city of the future or an urban company town run by a data giant? — Matt Mcfarland, CNN, "Alphabet tries to salvage its smart city plans in Toronto," 24 June 2019 The website that accompanies the films offers context, such as an article on working conditions - considered the most progressive of their time - and more information on life in Wilmerding, Pa., Westinghouse's company town. — al.com, "What technology looked like 115 years ago," 23 June 2019 One of the earliest examples of a company town, Arvida has been absorbed into the city of Saguenay, but its main street remains vibrant and the original architecture largely intact. — Danielle Bochove, Bloomberg.com, "Trump’s Trade War Looms Over a Canadian Town Built to Supply America," 28 June 2018 Before data mining was the preferred extractive industry of the Santa Clara Valley, mineral extraction built one of the region’s earliest variations of the company town. — Ingrid Burrington, The Atlantic, "Who Gets to Live in Silicon Valley?," 25 June 2018 For seven years, Garrett, 36, has lived in El Portal, a National Park Service company town near Yosemite’s southwest entrance. — Kyle Dickman, Outside Online, "A Rattle with Death in Yosemite," 20 June 2018These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'company town.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
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