the.com/hinterland
The land behind the land — where the map stops caring and the real stuff starts.
means The remote, undeveloped area lying behind a coastline, city, or port — the hinterland is what's inland and away from the action, geographically or figuratively.
from Borrowed directly from German, where 'hinter' means 'behind' and 'Land' means 'land' — so literally 'behind-land.' It entered English geography and economics in the late 1800s to describe the inland territory a port or city depends on for trade, then wandered into general use for any remote backcountry, and eventually into metaphor — the unexplored hinterland of someone's mind or past.
- origin
- German for behind the land
- original use
- land behind a port, supplying trade
- modern sense
- remote, undeveloped region far from cities
- figurative use
- someone's hinterland means hidden depth or background