Differences – Country, State and Nation

Today’s English
March 14th, 2017

We use the word country to refer to a land which has its own internationally recognized borders, government and army. As on today, there are 196 countries in the world, though Taiwan is not recognized as a country by the U.S..

The term State is synonymous with country but , with capital S it refers to a  country and with small “s" stands for a part of a large country, for example, in India, it is a part of a large country.

We use the word “nation" to mean a group of people who belong to the same race and share the same culture, traditions, religion, language, etc.

Similarly, a city is different from town in the following ways:
1.A city is largely populated and wider than a town.  Whenever it develops, it merges with surrounding areas but town never does it.
2.Corporate bodies rule the city with Mayor as its head but municipalities rule the town with Chairman as the head.
3.A town is larger than a village but smaller than a city. In broad sense, town and villages are parts of a city.

(Note: the meaning of town and city differs from country to country.  The above one is Indian context)

“Who is here so vile that will not love his country?” – Julius Caesar by Shakespeare