the.com/backwoods
Where the pavement gives up and the opinions get stronger.
means Remote, heavily wooded areas far from towns or cities — and by extension, the unsophisticated, old-fashioned ways of people who live there.
from A straightforward American compound from 'back' + 'woods,' first describing the forested frontier territory lying 'back' beyond settled areas — back of the cleared land, back of civilization's edge. It appears in American English as colonists pushed inland, and quickly picked up its figurative sense: 'backwoods' came to describe not just a place but a mentality, used (often by city folks, often unfairly) to mean unrefined, isolated, or behind the times.
- original sense
- literally the forest behind settled land
- connotation shift
- geography became an insult about sophistication
- also a cigar brand
- named for the same rustic image
- not always rural
- any isolated, old-fashioned mindset qualifies now