city hall

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city hall

1. The building housing the administrative offices of a municipal government.

2. The municipal government, especially its officials considered as a group.

3. Slang An entrenched and insensitive bureaucracy, especially of a city: still trying to fight city hall.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

city hall

1. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) the building housing the administrative offices of a city or municipal government

2. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) City Hall the building, located in Southwark and designed by Norman Foster, housing the headquarters of the Greater London Authority and London Mayor; opened in 2002

3. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) chiefly

a. municipal government

b. the officials of a municipality collectively

4. informal US bureaucracy

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

cit′y hall′

1. the administration building of a city government.

2. a city government.

3. Informal. bureaucratic rules and regulations, esp. of a city government: You can't fight city hall.

[1665–75, Amer.]

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Noun

city hall - a building that houses administrative offices of a municipal government

hall - a large building for meetings or entertainment

Translations

Rathaus

δημαρχείο

urbdomo

ayuntamiento alcaldía

kaupunginhallituskaupungintalo

hôtel de ville mairie

municipio

stadhuis

ratusz

City Hall

n (Am) → Comune m

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

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References in classic literature ?

Down through the twilight sank five attacking airships, one to the Navy Yard on East River, one to City Hall, two over the great business buildings of Wall Street and Lower Broadway, one to the Brooklyn Bridge, dropping from among their fellows through the danger zone from the distant guns smoothly and rapidly to a safe proximity to the city masses.

Then into the expectant hush came a great crash and uproar, the breaking down of the Brooklyn Bridge, the rifle fire from the Navy Yard, and the bursting of bombs in Wall Street and the City Hall. New York as a whole could do nothing, could understand nothing.

There came, too, longer and longer descriptions of the smashing up of the City Hall and the Navy Yard, and people began to realise faintly what those brief minutes of uproar had meant.

After the smashing of the City Hall and Post-Office, the white flag had been hoisted from a tower of the old Park Row building, and thither had gone Mayor O'Hagen, urged thither indeed by the terror-stricken property owners of lower New York, to negotiate the capitulation with Von Winterfeld.

Then down they had come at last to hover over City Hall Park, and it had crept in upon his mind,, chillingly, terrifyingly, that these illuminated black masses were great offices afire, and that the going to and fro of minute, dim spectres of lantern-lit grey and white was a harvesting of the wounded and the dead.

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As for the wonders of Bombay its famous city hall, its splendid library, its forts and docks, its bazaars, mosques, synagogues, its Armenian churches, and the noble pagoda on Malabar Hill, with its two polygonal towers-- he cared not a straw to see them.

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When we get to New York, I first borrow the money from you to buy a hat, and then we walk to the City Hall, where you go to the window marked "Marriage Licences", and buy one.

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The way led uptown, past the City Hall and the Fourteenth Street skyscrapers, and out Broadway to Mountain View.

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He thought that the young fellow must have made a mistake--it was inconceivable to him that any person could have a home like a hotel or the city hall. But he followed in silence, and they went up the long flight of steps, arm in arm.

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A policeman, brooding on life in the neighbourhood of City Hall Park and Broadway that evening, awoke with a start from his meditations to find himself being addressed by a young lady.

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Passing through the City Hall Park, he had noticed a group of men, in the centre of which were half a dozen, with flushed faces and raised voices, earnestly carrying on a discussion.

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We have purchased permission to waive the usual delay; and at half-past two o'clock the mayor of Marseilles will be waiting for us at the city hall. Now, as a quarter-past one has already struck, I do not consider I have asserted too much in saying, that, in another hour and thirty minutes Mercedes will have become Madame Dantes."