backwoods

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a remote, sparsely settled, and often wooded region, especially in North America

   The family built a cabin deep in the backwoods, several days from the nearest town.

2. 2
   adj

   located in or characteristic of a remote rural area, sometimes with an implication of isolation from modern life

   A narrow track led to a backwoods settlement beyond the river.

A North American compound of back, in the sense 'remote or away from the front,' and the plural noun woods. Recorded as a noun in the early eighteenth century, it later also became an adjective for places and ways of life associated with remote wooded country.

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