Definition of "city"

Ah, knovv you not the Citie fauours them, / And they haue troupes of Souldiers at their beck?

c. 1591–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act I, scene i], page 147, column 2

So this was my future home, I thought! […] Backed by towering hills, the but faintly discernible purple line of the French boundary off to the southwest, a sky of palest Gobelin flecked with fat, fleecy little clouds, it in truth looked a dear little city; the city of one's dreams.

1908, W[illiam] B[lair] M[orton] Ferguson, chapter IV, in Zollenstein, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company

One of the hidden glories of Victorian engineering is proper drains. Isolating a city’s effluent and shipping it away in underground sewers has probably saved more lives than any medical procedure except vaccination.

2014 June 14, “It's a gas”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8891

All our stations have changed. We have to constrain numbers. We have to mandate face coverings. These are massive changes in what is a public transport city. This is not a car city.

2020 July 15, Mike Brown talks to Paul Clifton, “Leading London's "hidden heroes"”, in Rail, page 42

Manchester, incorporated in 1838, was made the centre of a bishopric in 1847 and became a city in 1853. Liverpool was transformed into a city by Royal Charter when the new diocese of Liverpool was created in 1880.

1976, Cornelius P. Darcy, The Encouragement of the Fine Arts in Lancashire, 1760-1860, Manchester University Press, page 20

St Davids itself is the smallest city in Great Britain, with a population of less than 2,000.

2014, Graham Rutt, Cycling Britain's Cathedrals Volume 1, Lulu.com, page 307