[FELLOW sb. 11 c.] A citizen of the same city or polity as another.
1578. Chr. Prayers, in Priv. Prayers (1851), 448. The angels, and holy souls of men, are most blessed fellow-citizens for ever and ever.
1611. Bible, Eph. ii. 19. Yee are … fellow citizens with the Saints.
a. 1704. T. Brown, Pleas. Epist., Wks. 1730, I. 109. This may serve, fellow-citizens, to give you some idea of the man.
1752. Hume, Ess. & Treat. (1777), I. 348. A single man can scarcely be industrious, where all his fellow-citizens are idle.
1873. H. Spencer, Stud. Sociol., vi. 387. He is partially coerced into into such views as favour harmonious co-operation with his fellow citizens.
Hence Fellow-citizenship.
1796. Morse, Amer. Geog., II. 323. The city of Neuchatel has also a strict alliance of fellow-citizenship with Berne.
1858. J. Martineau, Stud. Chr., 311. The ‘Fraternity’ that is the offspring of political theories, and aims to neutralize by fellow-citizenship the diversities and antipathies of nature, is often the watchword of envy and egotism, shouted by the voice of hatred, and announcing the deed of violence.
