late 14c., "inhabited place larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town," from Old French vilage "houses and other buildings in a group" (usually smaller than a town), from Latin villaticum "farmstead" (with outbuildings), noun use of neuter singular of villaticus "having to do with a farmstead or villa," from villa "country house" (from PIE root *weik- (1) "clan"). As an adjective from 1580s. Village idiot is recorded from 1825. Related: Villager (1560s).
in Claddagh ring (Irish fáinne Chladach), from the village of Claddagh, County Gallway. The village name is literally "stony beach."
"dairy farm," now surviving, if at all, as a localism in East Anglia or Essex, it was once the common Old English wic "dwelling place, lodging, house, mansion, abode," then coming to mean "village, hamlet, town," and later "dairy farm" (as in Gatwick "Goat-farm"). Common in this latter sense 13c.-14c. The word is from a general Germanic borrowing from Latin vicus "group of dwellings, village; a block of houses, a street, a group of streets forming an administrative unit" (from PIE root *weik- (1) "clan"). Compare Old High German wih "village," German Weichbild "municipal area," Dutch wijk "quarter, district," Old Frisian wik, Old Saxon wic "village."
name given to an Algonquian people of Virginia, 1608, originally the name of a village, probably from Algonquian pawat- "falls" + -hanne "river." The name was applied by John Smith to the leader of the village (the father of Pocahontas) and then to the confederation of peoples associated with it.
1808, "village, town, or inhabited place in Spanish America," from Spanish pueblo "village, small town; people, population," from Latin populum, accusative of populus "people" (see people (n.)). Especially as a name for more or less self-governing native peoples of Arizona and New Mexico living in communal villages, by 1834.
"small village" (Scottish and Irish), early 15c., from Gaelic clach (plural clachan) "stone," originally perhaps "a stone circle."
1670s, "spherical," from globe + -al (1). Meaning "worldwide, universal, pertaining to the whole globe of the earth" is from 1892, from a sense development in French. Global village first attested 1960, popularized, if not coined, by Canadian educator Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980).
Postliterate man's electronic media contract the world to a village or tribe where everything happens to everyone at the same time: everyone knows about, and therefore participates in, everything that is happening the minute it happens. Television gives this quality of simultaneity to events in the global village. [Carpenter & McLuhan, "Explorations in Communication," 1960]
carbonated water, 1741, from German Selterser (Wasser), a kind of mineral water, literally "of Selters," village near Wiesbaden in Hesse-Nassau, where the mineral water is found.
