a town or city: a settled, inhabited place, named with an elevated, mostly poetic word
This is one of the Hebrew words for a city or town, but it is not the everyday word. It belongs almost entirely to poetry and elevated speech, and it means simply a settled, walled place where people live. The ordinary word for city carries the plain, workaday sense; this word carries the same idea in a more literary, poetic style, which is why it clusters in the poetic books like Isaiah, Proverbs, Habakkuk, and Lamentations rather than in the narratives.
Across its occurrences the meaning does not shift. Whether the city in view is faithful or corrupt, fortified or ruined, protected or besieged, the word itself still means just "city." The vivid range comes from the phrases it forms, not from the word: writers pair it with another noun to coin memorable expressions such as the city of confusion, the city of praise, and the strong city that a rich man trusts in.
Because it is a poetic near-twin of the common word for city, translators almost always render it simply as city or town. Nothing in the meaning requires a special English word; what a reader gains from the original is mainly the sense that a more literary term has been chosen.