英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

Neufchatel [Neufchatel 词源字典]: type of soft, white cheese, 1833, from Neufchâtel, small town in Normandy where it first was made.[Neufchatel etymology, Neufchatel origin, 英语词源]
pied a terre (n.): "small town house or rooms used for short residences," 1829, French, pied à terre, literally "foot on the ground."
Podunk: legendary small town, 1846, originally the name of a small group of Indians who lived around the Podunk River in Connecticut; the tribe name is in colonial records from 1656 (as Potunck), from southern New England Algonquian (Mohegan or Massachusetts) Potunk, probably from pautaunke, from pot- "to sink" + locative suffix -unk, thus "a boggy place." Its popularity as the name of a typical (if mythical) U.S. small town dates from a series of witty "Letters from Podunk" which ran in the "Buffalo Daily National Pilot" newspaper beginning Jan. 5, 1846.
provincial (adj.): late 14c., "pertaining to a province," from Old French provincial "belonging to a particular province (of friars)" (13c.), from Latin provincialis "of a province," from provincia (see province).

Meaning "of the small towns and countryside" (as opposed to the capital and urban center) is from 1630s, a borrowed idiom from French, transferred from sense of "particular to the province," hence "local." Suggestive of rude, petty, or narrow society by 1755. Classical Latin provincialis seems not to have had this tinge. In British use, with reference to the American colonies, from 1680s.
pueblo (n.): "Indian village," 1808, from Spanish pueblo "village, small town; people, population," from Latin populum, accusative of populus "people" (see people (n.)).
shtetl (n.): Jewish small town or village in Eastern Europe, 1949, from Yiddish, literally "little town," from diminutive of German Stadt "city, town," from Old High German stat "place," from PIE root *sta- "to stand" (see stet).
time zone (n.): by 1885, from time (n.) + zone (n.). As in Britain and France, the movement to regulate time nationally came from the railroads.
Previous to 1883 the methods of measuring time in the United States were so varied and so numerous as to be ludicrous. There were 50 different standards used in the United States, and on one road between New York and Boston, whose actual difference is 12 minutes, there were three distinct standards of time. Even small towns had two different standards one known as "town" or local time and the other "railroad" time.

... At noon on November 18, 1883, there was a general resetting of watches and clocks all over the United States and Canada, and the four great time zones, one hour apart, into which the country was divided came into being. So smoothly did the plan work that the general readjustment was accomplished without great difficulty and it has worked satisfactorily ever since. ["Railroad Trainman," 1909]
township (n.): Old English tunscipe "inhabitants or population of a town;" see town + -ship. Applied in Middle English to "manor, parish, or other division of a hundred." Specific sense of "local division or district in a parish, each with a village or small town and its own church" is from 1530s; as a local municipal division of a county in U.S. and Canada, first recorded 1685. In South Africa, "area set aside for non-whites" from 1934.