Also 7 townes people. [f. as prec. + PEOPLE. Orig. two words; now written as one.] People or inhabitants of a town or towns; townsmen and townswomen; townsfolk. (Usually const. as pl.).
1648. Cromwell, Lett., 25 Nov. And without money the stubborn towns-people will not trust them for the worth of a penny.
1691. in Somerset & Dorset N. & Q., June (1905), 263. Many died as also many Townes people of ye same distemper.
1833. Marryat, P. Simple, xxi. We had no parole, and but little communication with the townspeople.
1849. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., v. I. 573. The town’s people repaired to the cliffs and gazed long and anxiously.
1872. Bagehot, Physics & Pol., iv. 132. The place was crowded and a whole townspeople looking on.
b. People inhabiting the same town; fellow-townsmen. (Usually after possessive.)
1823. Examiner, 761/1. They are townspeople, we believe, the native place of both being … Edinburgh.
1870. Emerson, Soc. & Solit., iii. 45. Not by his friends or his townspeople or his contemporaries.
