What does citify mean?
Citify is a verb meaning to transform a place into something resembling a city, whether through physical development such as buildings, roads, and infrastructure, or through the adoption of urban lifestyles and habits by its inhabitants. It can also describe the process by which people become accustomed to city ways, often appearing in the participial adjective form 'citified'. The word is formed from 'city' combined with the productive suffix '-ify', which turns nouns into verbs of transformation. Citify is most commonly encountered in journalism, social commentary, and everyday conversation about urban sprawl and rural change, and it frequently carries a subtle evaluative charge: writers may use it neutrally to describe growth, or critically to lament the loss of rural character. Its counterpart in more technical planning vocabulary is 'urbanize', making citify a livelier, more colloquial alternative for describing the spread of city life.
verbTo make a place or its inhabitants characteristic of a city; to give an area the qualities of urban life, or to accustom someone to city ways.
- To make a place more like a city, especially by developing it in an urban manner.
- To cause a person to adopt the manners, habits, or outlook associated with city life (often used in passive form 'citified').
"The new rail line has citified what was once quiet farmland outside Denver."
"Decades of growth have citified the once-sleepy coastal town."
"After ten years in Manhattan, she was thoroughly citified and no longer felt at home on her parents' farm."
Citify is what happened to the countryside — one suffix at a time, farms became suburbs and suburbs became skylines.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of citify
Citify was formed in English from the noun 'city' plus the Latinate suffix '-ify' (from Latin facere, 'to make'), following the pattern of verbs like 'solidify' and 'intensify'. The root word 'city' derives ultimately from Latin 'civitas', meaning citizenship or community, which also gives us 'civic', 'civil', 'citizen', and 'civilization'. The verb arose during the period of rapid urbanization in the modern era, when English speakers needed a compact way to describe the transformation of rural areas by city influence.
Related word forms
How citify is actually used
Informal to moderately formal register; most often found in journalistic and conversational writing about urban development or rural-urban change. Frequently used in the past-participle form 'citified' as an adjective meaning having acquired city traits, sometimes with a mildly pejorative tone when describing people who have lost touch with rural life.
Easily confused with citify
City is a noun denoting a large urban settlement, while citify is a verb meaning to give something city characteristics.