Circa (from Latin, meaning "around"), usually abbreviated c. or ca. (also circ. or cca.), means "approximately" in the English language, usually referring to a date. Circa is widely used in genealogy and historical writing when the dates of events are not precisely known.

When used in date ranges, the term "circa" is applied before each approximate date, while dates without "circa" immediately preceding them are generally assumed to be known with certainty.

Examples:

A town is a human settlement larger than a village but smaller than a city. The size definition for what constitutes a "town" varies considerably in different parts of the world, so that, for example, many "small towns" in the United States would be regarded as villages in the United Kingdom, while many British "small towns" would qualify as cities in the United States.

The word town shares an origin with the German word Zaun, the Dutch word tuin, and the Old Norse tun. The German word Zaun comes closest to the original meaning of the word: a fence of any material.

In English and Dutch, the meaning of the word took on the sense of the space which these fences enclosed. In English, it was a small city that could not afford or was not allowed to build walls or other larger fortifications, and built a palisade or stockade instead (many early English settlements in North America used stockades.) In the Netherlands, this space was a garden, more specifically those of the wealthy, which had a high fence or a wall around them (like the garden of palace 't Loo in Apeldoorn, which was the example for the privy garden of William and Mary at Hampton Court). In Old Norse tun means a (grassy) place between farmhouses, and is still used in a similar meaning in modern Norwegian.