Vicus

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A designation for a small habitation or community, often part of a larger urban environment
2. A term referring to a type of small settlement or village that typically exists as part of a larger city or region
3. It denotes a locale characterized by limited population and often linked to a more significant urban area

Etymology: The word "vicus" is a Latin noun meaning "village," and it reached English as a technical term rather than an everyday one. In Roman usage a "vicus" was a cluster of dwellings outside the formal boundaries of a town or city, often growing up along a road or near a military camp, and it is this sense of a settlement attached to a larger urban centre that the English term keeps. The word is a doublet of "wick," an Old English word that survives in place names such as Norwich and Greenwich, where "wic" once meant a dwelling place or trading settlement. That shared ancestry is the surprising part. Both words descend from the same Latin root, one passing into English through the ordinary channels of the language's early history and the other borrowed later as a scholarly term. The result is that English speakers hold two forms of one word: a homely element hidden in town names and a deliberate Latin import used by historians and archaeologists.