Word of the Day: Township

A six-mile-by-six-mile square of land upon the surface of the earth–mostly.

The word township has two main meanings:

1. In the case of surveying and mapping, a township is a standard six-mile-by-six-mile surveyed regular quadrilateral in the Public Lands Survey System, and is also a east-west tier in that system. This system is used in most, but not all, of the United States.
2. In the case of government, a Township is a civil jurisdiction located, in level, approximately between a town/city and a county. In the United States, the term Township (civil) is not to be confused with township (survey) in the original thirteen States and Texas as the PLSS was never instituted there. In areas where the PLSS was used, civil townships and survey townships are occaisionally the same thing, but primarily in the Western U.S.A., township is a survey term only.