conurbation: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for July 13 is:

conurbation \kah-ner-BAY-shun\ noun
: an aggregation or continuous network of urban communities

Example sentence:
While some cities are built around a central hub, others, such as Los Angeles, are often described as sprawling conurbations with no fixed center.

Did you know?
When Sir Patrick Geddes, a Scottish biologist turned sociologist, sat down in 1915 to write _Cities in Evolution_, a work on urban planning, he needed a word. How should he refer to thickly populated regions consisting of a sprawling range of cities clustered together? "Some name, then, for these city-regions, these town aggregates, is wanted....What of 'conurbations'?" he asked rhetorically early on in his work. For his coinage, Geddes combined "urbs" (the Latin word for "city," already familiar in "urban" and "suburb") with the Latin prefix "con-" ("together") and the English noun suffix "-ation." It turned out that his word suited English speakers just fine -- we've been using it ever since.

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