- 1鎮民、全鎮的居民（把整座鎮的人當成一個群體來說；帶點故事、報導的書面味）
Townspeople means the people who live in a particular town, thought of together as one body. Not 'some people in the town' — all of them, as a group with a shared life: the same market, the same school, the same worry when the factory closes.
It is always plural. There is no 'a townspeople' and no 'townspeoples'. You say 'the townspeople were angry', with a plural verb, the same way you say 'the people were angry'.
Where you meet it matters. This is the word of stories, local history, and news reports — 'The townspeople gathered in the square', 'The townspeople had never seen a stranger like him'. It has a slightly old, storybook feel, and it usually appears when the town is acting as one: gathering, protesting, celebrating, deciding. In everyday speech people just say 'the locals', or 'people in the town', or simply 'everyone here'.
There is an older word, townsfolk, that means exactly the same and sounds even more like a fairy tale. And note the s sitting in the middle — towns-people, not town-people. That s is a leftover : the town's people. English has a small family of these: tradespeople, , , spokesperson.
組成town + -s- + people. The -s- in the middle is an old possessive: 'the town's people'. English keeps that joining -s in a handful of compounds — tradespeople, spokesperson, craftsmanship.
同家族的字
- townthe root word
- tradespeoplesame joining -s- and same -people — people of a trade
- spokespersonsame joining -s- — a person who speaks for a group
- towniesame town root, but a rude label instead of a neutral group name
- townshipsame town root
原始詞典資料1 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
這個拼法也被記錄為下列字的變化形：
- townsperson
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。