BOROUGH, BURROUGH, Borow, or Burgh, a corporation or town which is not a city. The word in its original signification meant a company consisting of ten families, which were bound together as each others pledge. Afterwards borough came to signify a town having a wall or some inclosure round it: and all places that in old time had the name of borough, it is said, were fortified or fenced in some shape or other. Borough is a place of safety and privilege: and some are called free burghs, and the tradesmen in them free burghes.
Borough burgesses, from a freedom they had granted to them originally to buy and sell without disturbance, and exempt from toll.