town hall

noun

1

: a public building used for town-government offices and meetings

2

: an event at which a public official or political candidate addresses an audience by answering questions posed by individual members

Town halls have lost some of their spontaneity. The 80 or so undecided voters chosen for Tuesday's event must submit their questions in advance and moderator Candy Crowley of CNN will decide which people to call on.

—Connie Cass

Examples of town hall in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Harris will participate in a town hall in Chester Township, Pennsylvania, on CNN, while Emhoff is in Florida for a pair of campaign events. —Jack Birle, Washington Examiner - Political News and Conservative Analysis About Congress, the President, and the Federal Government, 21 Oct. 2024

During Sunday's town hall, Trump also swung hard at Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris' evolving position on fracking, an energy-extraction technique used for natural gas in Pennsylvania and more than two dozen other states. —Aysha Bagchi, USA TODAY, 21 Oct. 2024

Trump was also invited to participate in a CNN town hall. —Andrew Torgan, CNN, 20 Oct. 2024

Driven by a tight labor market, corporate leaders have recently invested enormous amounts of energy and resources in collecting employee feedback through pulse surveys, town halls, listening tours, focus groups, data scraping from message boards, and other methods. —Ethan Burris, Benjamin Thomas, Harvard Business Review, 20 Oct. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

15th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Kids Definition

town hall

noun

: a public building used for offices and meetings of town government