This is the place itself: a small English city with a river running through it, old stone colleges along the water, and a modern business area on the edge of town called the science park. The city is not big, but the name is, because the university inside it is famous all over the world. That is why Cambridge on its own often means the university rather than the streets and houses. When people do mean the place, they usually make it clear with Cambridge, England, or the city of Cambridge. The source also lists a smaller village called Cambridge in Gloucestershire and many towns of the same name in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The full name is the University of Cambridge, but in ordinary speech the city name does the whole job. If someone says she is at Cambridge, they are talking about study, not about where her flat is. This use is an ellipsis: a longer name with the middle left out. Two patterns are worth holding on to. You are at Cambridge while you are studying, and you go to Cambridge when you are accepted and start. The university is made of many separate colleges, and students clip those names too, so King's or Trinity inside a Cambridge conversation means a college, not a church or a person.

This Cambridge is an American city, and it was given the English city's name. It sits on the far bank of the Charles River from Boston, so people often describe it as just across the river. Like the English one, it is known for the universities inside it: Harvard, Radcliffe and MIT. Because the two cities share a name, American writing usually adds the state — Cambridge, Massachusetts, or Cambridge, MA. In the past it was one of the county seats of Middlesex County, and towns called Cambridge also exist in Idaho, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio and Vermont, as well as in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.