Does the word '县子‘ exist？ I wonder if the word &quot;县子&quot; colloquially exists in the Chinese language.
I’ve probably heard this word before, and I‘m not exactly sure, but I blurrily remember it was from a conversation between my grandparents.
I suppose this is like an infrequently used dialectical term in Chinese and the infrequency of its usage, and perhaps to a certain extent, its uncommonness makes it only conversationally and dialectically correct and particularly not acceptable in formal situations.
句子有：
她们几个去那儿的县子了。
Thank you in advance.

Thank you very much for your help!
子 in words like 筷子, 裤子 is a padding to make single character words fit into modern Chinese which favours double character words. Most Chinese people picked them up as they build vocabulary and aren't taught any rule on formulating these.
However, if you want a rough rule, then 子 is like the English suffix '-let' which only fits on nouns that can be seen as small.
In Chinese thinking, only 村/village is small enough to be called 村子.
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However, to avoid the awkwardness of using the single-character geographical words 省/城/县/乡/镇/etc, other suffixes like &quot;里&quot; are used instead.
For example, 看这个病得去省里/城里/县里/乡里/镇里 (This disease can only be treated in the [nearest] provincial [capital]/city/county/township/town).
&quot;里&quot; obviously means inside, which is more fitting for larger geographical areas.