Does the word '县子‘ exist？

While, when reading this sentence,

她们几个去那儿的县子了

我感到一股乡土气息扑面而来. -_-!

"县子" maybe used in the old days ( 1970s, 1980s ) especially someone comes from countryside, sounds countrified, not educated. I only heard my Grandma said this kind of word.

There is a famous author, named "赵树理", who created a similar writing style, describing the happy life of the farmers, this style is named "山药蛋派". If you are interest, you can search for this books.

This use of 县子 is probably obsolete nowadays. I only heard old people say it when I was still a small kid. E. g. 他住在一个小县子里面. And it's probably dialectal (I lived in Northeast Region by then).

I don't really hear people(around me) say it now. Usually we say 县 or 县城 instead. However, 村子 is still being used. E. g. 他住在村子里面。

县子 = town

她们几个去那儿的县子了。
A few of the girls went to the town over there.

Especially in rural areas 县、县子 may still be used as town.

怀化市 （spoken: fyfashi, they don't like h in 怀化市!) 的 会同县 in 湖南省

省、市、县、区

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 "里" 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).

"里" obviously means inside, which is more fitting for larger geographical areas.

I think it may refer to a rank (title) in the past:

Example 1:
《北史．卷二三．于栗磾傳》：「寔字賓實，少和厚，以軍功封萬年縣子。」

Example 2:
明朝郡公、郡侯、郡伯、縣子、縣男列表

I need more examples. but "县" means "county, the administrative district one level lower than the city", such as "桐庐县" is a county in "杭州市", "宝应县" is a county in "扬州市". "子" is usually a suffix, has no actual meaning, like "桌子" "筷子". "县子" maybe is a dialect words means "县" or "县城".