From WordNet (r) 2.0 (August 2003) [wn]:
village
n 1: a community of people smaller than a town [syn: {small
town}, settlement]
2: a settlement smaller than a town [syn: hamlet]
3: a mainly residential district of Manhattan; `the Village'
became a home for many writers and artists in the 20th
century [syn: Greenwich Village, Village]
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Village \Vil"lage\ (?; 48), n. [F., fr. L. villaticus belonging
to a country house or villa. See Villa, and cf.
Villatic.]
A small assemblage of houses in the country, less than a town
or city.
[1913 Webster]
Village cart, a kind of two-wheeled pleasure carriage
without a top.
[1913 Webster]
Syn: Village, Hamlet, Town, City.
Usage: In England, a hamlet denotes a collection of houses,
too small to have a parish church. A village has a
church, but no market. A town has both a market and a
church or churches. A city is, in the legal sense, an
incorporated borough town, which is, or has been, the
place of a bishop's see. In the United States these
distinctions do not hold.
[1913 Webster]