Dictionary Definition
rustic adj
1 characteristic of rural life; "countrified
clothes"; "rustic awkwardness" [syn: countrified, countryfied]
2 awkwardly simple and provincial; "bumpkinly
country boys"; "rustic farmers"; "a hick town"; "the nightlife of
Montmartre awed the unsophisticated tourists" [syn: bumpkinly, hick, unsophisticated]
3 used of idealized country life; "a country life
of arcadian contentment"; "a pleasant bucolic scene"; "charming in
its pastoral setting"; "rustic tranquility" [syn: arcadian, bucolic, pastoral]
4 characteristic of the fields or country;
"agrestic simplicity"; "rustic stone walls" [syn: agrestic] n : an
unsophisticated country person
User Contributed Dictionary
Pronunciation
- /ˈrʌstɪk/
- Rhymes: -ʌstɪk
Adjective
rusticTranslations
country-styled
- Dutch: landelijk
unfinished, roughly finished
crude, rough
Quotations
- late 1700s — Robert
Burns,
Behold, My Love, How Green the Groves
- The Princely revel may survey Our rustic dance wi' scorn.
- 1818 — Mary
Shelley,
Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus Ch. I
- With his permission my mother prevailed on her rustic guardians to yield their charge to her. They were fond of the sweet orphan. Her presence had seemed a blessing to them, but it would be unfair to her to keep her in poverty and want when Providence afforded her such powerful protection.
- 1820 — Washington
Irving, Rural
Life in England in
The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon
- To this mingling of cultivated and rustic society may also be attributed the rural feeling that runs through British literature.
Noun
- A person from a rural area.
Quotations
- 1906 — Arthur
Conan Doyle, Sir Nigel, Ch
IX
- The King looked at the motionless figure, at the little crowd of hushed expectant rustics beyond the bridge, and finally at the face of Chandos, which shone with amusement.
- 1927-29 — Mahatma
Gandhi,
An Autobiography or The Story of my Experiments with Truth,
Part V, The Stain of Indigo, translated 1940 by Mahadev
Desai
- Thus this ignorant, unsophisticated but resolute agriculturist captured me. So early in 1917, we left Calcutta for Champaran, looking just like fellow rustics.
Extensive Definition
Rustic can refer to:
In zoology:
- The Rustic, a noctuid moth
- The Rustic (Cupha erymanthis), a nymphalid butterfly
In geography:
- Rustic, Toronto, a neighbourhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words
Arcadian, Bauer, Spartan, agrarian, agrestic, agricultural, agriculturalist,
agriculturist,
agrologist, agronomist, apple knocker,
artless, ascetic, austere, awkward, backwoods, backwoodsman, bald, bare, boor, boorish, bucolic, bumpkin, campestral, candid, clod, cloddish, clodhopper, clown, coffee-planter, collective
farm worker, common,
commonplace,
countrified,
country, country
bumpkin, country cousin, countryman, countrywoman, crofter, cropper, crude, cultivator, direct, dirt farmer, dry, dry farmer, dull, exurbanite, farm, farm laborer, farmer, farmhand, frank, gawky, gentleman farmer, granger, greenhorn, grower, guileless, harvester, harvestman, haymaker, hayseed, hick, hillbilly, homely, homespun, husbandman, ingenuous, jay, kibbutznik, kolkhoznik, kulak, lean, looby, lout, loutish, lowland, lumpen, matter-of-fact, mossback, mountaineer, muzhik, naive, natural, neat, oaf, oafish, open, outland, pastoral, peasant, peasant holder,
picker, plain, plain-speaking,
plain-spoken, planter,
plodding, plowboy, plowman, prosaic, prosing, prosy, provincial, pure, raiser, rancher, ranchman, reaper, redneck, ridge runner, rough, rube, rural, severe, sharecropper, simple, simple-speaking, sober, sower, spare, stark, straightforward,
suburbanite,
tea-planter, tenant farmer, tiller, tree farmer, truck
farmer, unadorned,
unaffected, uncomplicated, uncultivated, uncultured, ungainly, unimaginative, unmannerly, unpoetical, unpolished, unrefined, unsophisticated,
unvarnished,
upland, woodsy, yap, yeoman, yokel