rustic — English Dictionary

Adjective

1. Country-styled or pastoral; rural.

   Examples

   rustic country where the sheep and cattle roamed freely

   She had a rustic, woodland air.

   More examples (3)

   late 1700s, Robert Burns, Behold, My Love, How Green the Groves The Princely revel may survey Our rustic dance wi' scorn.

   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.

   To this mingling of cultivated and rustic society may also be attributed the rural feeling that runs through British literature.

2. Unfinished or roughly finished.

   Examples

   rustic manners

3. Crude, rough.

4. Simple; artless; unaffected.

   Examples

   the manners not too polite nor too rustic

   More examples (1)

   Now we plunged into a deep shade with the boughs lacing each other overhead, and crossed dainty, rustic bridges over the cold trout-streams, the boards giving back the clatter of our horses' feet: or anon we shot into a clearing, with a colored glimpse of the lake and its curving shore far below us.

Noun

1. A rural person.

   Examples

   More examples (2)

   The cause of these stampedes was generally undiscoverable; but sometimes, when the birds stayed some time down on the water, the figure of a rustic would at length appear, walking behind a hedge, along a path bounding the little meadow.

   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.

2. An unsophisticated or uncultured person.

   Usage

   • Derogatory

   Examples

   Thus this ignorant, unsophisticated but resolute agriculturist captured me. So early in 1917, we left Calcutta for Champaran, looking just like fellow rustics.

3. A noctuoid moth.

4. Any of various nymphalid butterflies having brown and orange wings, especially Cupha erymanthis.

Adjective

1. characteristic of rural life

   Synonyms

   countrifiedcountryfied

   Examples

   countrified clothes

   rustic awkwardness

2. awkwardly simple and provincial

   Synonyms

   bumpkinlyhickunsophisticated

   Examples

   bumpkinly country boys

   rustic farmers

   More examples (2)

   a hick town

   the nightlife of Montmartre awed the unsophisticated tourists

3. characteristic of the fields or country

   Synonyms

   agrestic

   Examples

   agrestic simplicity

   rustic stone walls

Noun

1. an unsophisticated country person

   Broader terms

   commonercommon person