A borough is an administrative division in various countries. In principle, the term borough designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely.
The word borough derives from common Germanic *Burg, meaning fort: compare with bury, burgh and brough (England), burgh (Scotland), Burg (Germany), borg (Scandinavia), burcht (Dutch), boarch (West Frisian), and the Germanic borrowing present in neighbouring Indo-european languages such as borgo (Italian), bourg (French), burgo (Spanish and Portuguese), burg (Romanian), purg (Kajkavian) and durg (दर्ग) (Hindi) and arg (ارگ) (Persian). The incidence of these words as suffixes to place names (for example, Aldeburgh, Bamburgh, Tilbury, Tilburg, Strasbourg (Strossburi in the local dialect), Luxembourg, Edinburgh, Grundisburgh, Hamburg, Gothenburg) usually indicates that they were once fortified settlements.
In the Middle Ages, boroughs were settlements in England that were granted some self-government; burghs were the Scottish equivalent. In medieval England, boroughs were also entitled to elect members of parliament. The use of the word borough probably derives from the burghal system of Alfred the Great. Alfred set up a system of defensive strong points (Burhs); in order to maintain these settlements, he granted them a degree of autonomy. After the Norman Conquest, when certain towns were granted self-governance, the concept of the burh/borough seems to have been reused to mean a self-governing settlement.
The Burroughs is a place in Hendon, and a civic district of London Borough of Barnet. It is centred on the road of the same name where Hendon Town Hall is located.
It was a distinct hamlet until the 1890s, as can be seen on this ordnance survey map of 1873. The name, known from 1316 until the 19th Century as 'the burrows', doubtless refers to the keeping of rabbit warrens.
There was an inn and brew-house by the 16th century for travellers, very possibly the White Bear, which was so-called from 1736, and was rebuilt in 1932. Here, the 'leet courts', based on feudal tradition, were held as late as 1916, to ensure the rights of the Lord of the Manor to control the increasingly emancipated peasantry, to punish transgressors, and to fix 'Quit-Rent' for those who had built on manorial land and wastes.
By 1697 the inn was the location for Hendon's Whitsun fair. Originally an un-chartered hiring fair for local hay farmers, it was also renowned for dancing and country sports, and was imortalised in the lines of a song of the 1810s:
New York City, in the state of New York, in the United States, is composed of five boroughs. They are Manhattan, The Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. Each borough has the same boundaries as a county of the state. The county governments were dissolved when the city consolidated in 1898, along with all city, town, and village governments within each county.
The term borough was adopted to describe a unique form of governmental administration for each of the five fundamental constituent parts of the newly consolidated city. Under New York State Law, a "borough" is a municipal corporation that is created when a county is merged with populated areas within it. This differs significantly from typical borough forms of government used in Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, other states, Greater London, and elsewhere.
New York City can be referred to collectively as the five boroughs; the term is used to refer to New York City as a whole unambiguously, avoiding confusion with any particular borough or with the greater metropolitan area. The term is often used by politicians to counter a frequent focus on Manhattan and, thereby, to place all five boroughs on equal footing. In the same vein, the term outer boroughs (or outer boros) refers to all the boroughs excluding Manhattan, even though the geographic center of the city is along the Brooklyn and Queens border.