How to Use the big city in a Sentence

the big city

noun phrase
  • One hand in the air for the big city.
    — Holly Yan, CNN Money, 18 June 2026
  • But hey, that’s life in the big city, man.
    — Brian Davids, HollywoodReporter, 20 Jan. 2026
  • College in the big city wasn’t a fit for most.
    — Chadd Scott, Forbes.com, 26 Aug. 2025
  • Their dreams of making good money in the big city are fading.
    — Christian Shepherd, Vic Chiang, Lillian Yang and Theodora Yu, The Washington Post, Anchorage Daily News, 26 July 2023
  • Perhaps many once lived in the big city and bolted for the suburbs.
    — Charles Selle, Chicago Tribune, 13 Aug. 2025
  • Folks in small towns may find things on the menu are a bit cheaper than what folks in the big city will pay.
    — Melissa Locker, Southern Living, 19 June 2024
  • That gets into the tropes the movie’s playing with — a small-town boy goes to the big city, right?
    — Aja Romano, Vox, 25 Dec. 2024
  • The challenge was to find the village where my parents are sent to, away from the big city.
    — Abbey White, The Hollywood Reporter, 26 Oct. 2023
  • Every room is a luxurious space to sprawl out in the big city.
    — Condé Nast, Condé Nast Traveler, 10 June 2026
  • Follow your favorite single gals looking for love in the big city.
    — Caroline Ritzie, The Enquirer, 10 June 2025
  • Kelly Clarkson is building a new life — and a new look — in the big city.
    — Julie Jordan, Peoplemag, 3 Jan. 2024
  • The downtown strip is a taste of the big city tucked away in a quaint small community.
    — Paige Moore, AZCentral.com, 10 Feb. 2026
  • As a result, providers can leave the big city and thrive within their specialty.
    — Geoff Whitmore, Forbes.com, 30 May 2025
  • Clearly these folks are from some small town, in the big city for the first time, and don’t know how to act in the theater.
    — Neil Senturia, San Diego Union-Tribune, 14 Apr. 2025
  • The thing is, everyone thinks of me as the successful one, the one who moved to the big city and made it.
    — Harriette Cole, Mercury News, 3 Dec. 2025
  • What appears to connect them most strongly is a sense of loneliness in the big city.
    — Peter Rainer, The Christian Science Monitor, 14 Nov. 2024
  • All of this and more could happen to an Indigenous woman in the big city.
    — Literary Hub, 25 Mar. 2026
  • Going to Wal-Mart in Greenville felt like going to the big city.
    — Hojun Choi, Dallas News, 20 June 2023
  • This is where real stories happen, and the big city that looms to the south is only a backdrop.
    — Amanda Whiting, Vulture, 5 Nov. 2025
  • According to the radio, there is much frolicking in the big city.
    — ABC News, 6 July 2025
  • Carpenter starred as one of the two titular babysitters who take on the big city in search of a missing kid.
    — Kathleen Walsh, Glamour, 23 Dec. 2024
  • Check out this clever original about a country family (the Greens) who move to the big city.
    — Brian Tallerico, Vulture, 8 Oct. 2025
  • As a kid, Pat took a trip to the big city, Portland — and was shocked to see people living on the streets.
    — Jay Nordlinger, National Review, 14 May 2023
  • After leaving Erin’s home, the Mallards find themselves in the big city.
    — Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter, 20 Dec. 2023
  • As the years went by, star players began to outgrow the Sun and move on to the big city franchises as free agents.
    — Dom Amore, Hartford Courant, 8 June 2026
  • Packing for a trip that includes time in the big city as well as the picturesque countryside like this takes a good amount of planning.
    — Benjamin Liong Setiawan, Travel + Leisure, 3 June 2023
  • The Kang family has moved from the big city to run a bed-and-breakfast that was supposed to sit along a new highway.
    — Bethy Squires, Vulture, 23 Oct. 2024
  • Why not avoid the big city’s expensive real estate and get more space and access to nature, the thinking goes.
    — Richard E. Ocejo, TIME, 2 July 2024
  • Howard and other legends like Lieber also wrote about fantasy stories in the big city.
    — Rob Wieland, Forbes, 2 Dec. 2024
  • Season 3 will see the show move out of the big city of Rio de Janeiro and into the countryside.
    — Rafa Sales Ross, Variety, 21 Oct. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'the big city.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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