a broad open place in a town: the public square at the gate, or the wide street where people gather.
This word names the open, spacious part of a town, as opposed to the cramped lanes and packed houses around it. Its root idea is width, room, an unbuilt clearing where a crowd can stand. In the ancient walled town that clearing was usually the plaza just inside the main gate, the one place big enough for the whole community to assemble. So the word covers both that civic square and the broad public ways of the town, and the line between the two is often thin.
The gate-square is where public life happened. People gathered there to hear the law read aloud, to bring a grievance before the elders, to muster for war, to greet a traveler who had nowhere to stay. When the Bible wants to picture a town governing itself in the open, this is the place it names.
The wider streets carry a different mood depending on the scene. In the wisdom books they are where life is lived in public: wisdom calls out there, the foolish lurk there, water should not be wasted there. In the prophets and laments they become the stage for a town's grief or ruin, filled with the dying, the mourning, or one day again with old people resting and children at play. The two shades are the same open ground seen from different angles, which is why translators move freely between street and square.