a. and sb. colloq. Also -ey, -ie. [f. TOWN sb. + -Y.]
A. adj. Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of the town; townish.
1837. New Monthly Mag., L. 248. His acquired habits were of the town, towny.
1857. E. M. Whitty, Friends in Bohemia, I. xxvi. 211. Are you not weary of this towney life? its diseased, dissipated, fevered, intriguing, pushing, competing, objectless, unholy life?
1908. Treasury, Feb., 507. A house so towny and stylish, compared with our farm homesteads.
B. sb. 1. A town-bred man; spec. a Londoner.
1828. P. Cunningham, N. S. Wales (ed. 3), II. 223. If we could not say we had committed as many [robberies] as these townies, they would look upon us with contempt. Ibid., 230. Many surgeons find that by putting all the old townies into double irons whenever robberies begin to prevail, a cessation soon takes place.
2. U.S. university slang. A townsman as distinct from a member of the university; cf. TOWNEE.
1853. Yale Lit. Mag., XIX. 2 (Thornton). The genus by the German students denominated ‘Philistines,’ by the Cantabs ignominiously called ‘Snobs,’ and which custom here has named ‘Townies.’
1869. W. T. Washburne, Fair Harvard, 54 (ibid.). One beholds the conscious ‘towney’ on his evening promenade.
3. A fellow-townsman or townswoman. slang.
1865. Morn. Star, 18 July. She is a ‘towny’ (of the same town) of mine, and I want to see her safe home.
1869. Routledge’s Ev. Boy’s Ann., 347. Then you and me’s ‘towneys’ it seems.
1892. Stevenson & L. Osbourne, Wrecker, xii. A townie of mine was lost down this way, in a coal-ship.
