Definition of "citizen" []

• A person owing loyalty to and entitled by birth or naturalization to the protection of a state or nation. (noun)
• A resident of a city or town, especially one entitled to vote and enjoy other privileges there. (noun)
• A civilian. (noun)
• A native, inhabitant, or denizen of a particular place: "We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community” ( Franklin D. Roosevelt). (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "This decision of the Supreme Court on the plea in abatement that the plaintiff (a Negro, Dred Scott) was not a citizen in the sense of the word in Article iii, Sec. 2 of the Constitution, was based upon an erroneous idea respecting the location of the word _citizen_ in the instrument."
• "The court say that, "to be a citizen it is necessary that he should be entitled to the enjoyment of these privileges and immunities, upon the same terms upon which they are conferred upon other citizens; and unless he is so entitled, _he cannot, in the proper sense of the term, be a citizen_.""
• "In 1865 the legislature discriminated against women by the passage of a very long act, prescribing the manner in which enumerations of _white male citizens_ shall be made; thus implying that a _white male citizen_ is an honorable and important person, whose existence is to be noted with due care; with a care that distinguishes him equally above the _white female_ and the _black male_ citizen, and in effect places these two unenumerated divisions of human beings into one class."