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country

Pronunciation: /ˈkʌntɹi/

The English word “country” has 12 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. The territory of a nation; a sovereign state or a region once independent and still distinct in institutions, language, etc.
  2. A large area regarded as distinct from other areas, e.g. because it is inhabited by a specific group of people
  3. An area of land of undefined extent; a region, a district.
  4. An area of land of indefinite extent or of more or less definite extent in relation to human occupation, especially characterized by its particular physical features, or its suitability for a particular activity or connected with its population (by race, dialect, culture, etc.) or a person, especially a writer, or their works.
  5. A rural area, as opposed to a town or city; the countryside.
  6. The inhabitants or people of a district, region, or nation; the populace, the public.
  7. Traditional lands of Indigenous people with embedded cultural, spiritual, cosmological, ecological, and physical attributes and values.
  8. The spirit of the country (rural places): the spirit of country folkways; those folkways.
  9. The rock through which a vein of ore or coal runs.

adjective

  1. From or in the countryside, connected with it, or typical of it.
  2. Of or connected to country music.
  3. Originating in India rather than being imported from abroad.

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English contre, borrowed from Old French contree, from Vulgar Latin *(terra) contrāta (“facing land”), from Latin contrā (“against”) + -āta (noun-forming suffix). Cognate with Scots kintra. Unrelated to county. Displaced native English land in some of its senses. From around 1300 as "area surrounding a walled city or town; the open country." By early 16th century the sense…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.