I am at a conference of educators from around the world. They had a "town meeting," and I was so surprised that these supposed highly educated people defined it using...Wikipedia! I realize that Wikipedia is often good, but in this case I didn't think it was that relevant. Here was their definition:

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a meeting where the population of an entire geographic area is invited to participate in a gathering, often for a political, administrative, or legislative purpose. Traditionally, a town meeting is a time when community members come together to legislate policy and budgets for their town. However, politicians in the United States have been using the term to represent a forum for voters to ask questions.

This was merely a meeting where participants could make comments, ask questions of each other, or in general chat (you know academics!). Surely there wasn't a political, administrative or legislative purpose, nor were policy or budgets to be discussed. The election was over, so this wasn't a forum for the voters to ask questions. Perhaps it wasn't a town meeting after all. Now that I read that definition more carefully, I think they should have called it something else.

If I am defining something from a dictionary in an academic paper, I usually use the OED. In this case the OED was similar to Wikipedia:

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A general assembly of the inhabitants of a town; spec. in U.S. a legal meeting of the qualified voters of a ‘town’ for the transaction of public business, having certain powers of local government.

Nope, this wasn't a town meeting at all.

It's not an expression we would use in the UK. Possibly the nearest would be a "public meeting".

As Richard says it isn't an expression that we've ever used here, perhaps because we have historically never had towns of such an egalitarian nature as the frontier towns of the Old West.
On the other hand I'm familiar with the concept and this usage seems to me to be a simple metaphorical extension of the term.
It's something I've noted before, even among quite heavyweight sources, that there is a tendency to ascribe new meanings to a word or phrase when someone was just using it as a metaphor.

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there is a tendency to ascribe new meanings to a word or phrase when someone was just using it as a metaphor.

I agree wholeheartedly.

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there is a tendency to ascribe new meanings to a word or phrase when someone was just using it as a metaphor.

I call it "overdoing," Or perhaps even "pretentious."

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we have historically never had towns of such an egalitarian nature as the frontier towns of the Old West.

The idea of town meetings began in the early colonial days, especially, I think, in the NorthEast. It still survives in many places, including Rhode Island.

I don't think it ever made it even to, let alone across, the Mississippi. The Old West towns, with a few exceptions - mostly utopian, were probably far less egalitarian than the original colonial villages. Survival (and ascendancy) of the fittest was the rule on the frontier.

At least as portrayed in the fictional accounts, a Town Meeting in the West occurred primarily as a prelude to a lynching or coup.

I rather suspect that the reason why Town Meetings are not known in the UK is that towns and villages have had other forms of governance since as long as "the time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary." The Colonists, in a new world, tried new ways.

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At least as portrayed in the fictional accounts, a Town Meeting in the West occurred primarily as a prelude to a lynching or coup.

That's the trouble with using fictional accounts as historical documents. Survival of the fittest was certainly a mainstay of the early settlers but those that followed were not the rugged individualists who first settled the West. Later settlers were more interested in establishing order and brought Eastern political systems with them to help in doing that. Perhaps not "town meetings" as we know them but certainly they had organized meetings to settle town problems, elect officials, and improve economic conditions for their own continued benefit and success.

And sometimes that meant holding a meeting to plan a lynching. That might make a headline but only because that meeting was out of the ordinary and not a usual part of daily life.

Nowadays where I am at, we often use town hall meeting to mean any meeting attended by a large number of people with diverse backgrounds or roles to play where everyone has a chance to participate.

There's a difference between a "town meeting", which is a meeting at which the actual governance of the town is conducted, and a "town hall meeting", which is a meeting, generally political in nature, that is located in the Town Hall, or some more convenient substitute, at which issues are discussed, but not decided.

The present day Presidential candidates are conducting town hall meetings, which are just part of their campaign. Town hall meetings exist throughout the country, but I've only heard of town meetings in the NE.

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where everyone has a chance to participate

There are also town hall meetings (so-called) where politicians speak but don't allow any input from the audience, unless the questions have been pre-screened.

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there is a tendency to ascribe new meanings to a word or phrase when someone was just using it as a metaphor.

I know. However, I won't give them this, in this case. Remember, they put the town meeting on their agenda, and then defined it from the Wikipedia definition above. Having defined it for the audience, to me, took away the possibility of it being a metaphor. They defined it, and then didn't stick with the definition.

I do remember our town hall meetings from when I was a little girl. In my community we have something similar, called "caucus meetings." In fact that meeting is coming up.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kalleh,

Kalleh: But your link doesn't, as far as I saw, use the term "caucus meeting", which is a strange form.

I was also confused as to what the heck it really is. On the one hand:

"In 1915 the Village of Winnetka officially adopted the Caucus form of non-partisan self-government where everyone who has a vote has a voice."

which makes it sound like the Caucus is the governing body. On the other hand:

"The Caucus Council is the community's liaison to the four Boards that comprise Winnetka's government - Village Council, Park, Schools and Library Boards."

which implies that it is not. Then there's this:

"The Caucus Council ... writes the platforms by which the Village boards are guided."

I was also troubled by the statement that attendance is mandatory.

Winnetka has a village meeting to talk about the Caucus survey results. The Caucus Committee Members plan the survey and analyze it, so those meetings must be mandatory for them (I am not on the Caucus).

From what I understand, the survey results give direction to the city hall, park district, school district, and library district (the survey has questions in all those areas), but surely those bodies make their own decisions. I've never thought the Caucus Survey nor the Caucus village meetings were worth much. It just seemed to be relevant to this discussion.