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rustic

UK/ˈɹʌstɪk/US/ˈɹʌstɪk/
adjectiveC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,198 of 15,258neutral

Rustic means simple and rough in a countryside way. A rustic cottage, rustic bread, rustic charm.

It is approving in cooking and design — rustic bread and rustic furniture are selling points, meaning honest and unpolished. Applied to a person it is condescending and dated, meaning unsophisticated. Note that rustic in menus and estate agency does a lot of work covering for rough edges; and that rustic and rural come from the same Latin word for the countryside.

Definitions of rustic

  1. 1adjectiverusticSimple and rough in a countryside way.C1

    “The restaurant had rustic wooden tables and old farm tools on the walls.”

rustic is a quality of country simplicity.

Where it comes from

Latin rusticus comes from rus, the countryside. Rural and rusticate come from the same country, and rusticate once meant to be sent down from university.

  1. Latin

    rūsticus

  2. English, today

    rustic

From Latin rūsticus. a doublet of roister.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Word Building

Practise this word

rustic in the wild

  • The specific rustica is Latin for "rustic, simple".

    Rustic bunting

  • Apamea sordens, the rustic shoulder-knot or bordered apamea, is a moth of the family Noctuidae.

    Apamea sordens

  • Wisconsin is the only state to have a system of rustic roads.

    Rustic Road (Wisconsin)

  • The Information Centre was one of the first rustic style buildings to be built in a Canadian national park.

    Jasper Park Information Centre

  • The rustic structure is located near Twin Falls in the Little Yoho Valley.

    Twin Falls Tea House

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.