small-town, a.
Also small town.
[small a.]
Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of a small town; unsophisticated, provincial.
| 1824 Blackw. Mag. June 659/2 Nothing can be better than Miss Austin's [sic] sketches of that sober, orderly, small-town, parsonage, sort of society in which she herself had spent her life. 1859 Bentley's Q. Rev. July 437 If ‘George Eliot’ proves to be..a very young man, son of a small town tradesman [etc.]. 1881 Harper's Mag. Jan. 223/2 Cosmopolitans, they do not sink into the ruts of small-town life. 1930 R. Macaulay Staying with Relations xvii. 254 It looked even a little more decayed and small-town than the Miramar. 1937 J. M. Murry Necessity of Pacifism iii. 47 Their natural mode of feeling is still small-town and parochial. 1949 Koestler Promise & Fulfilment i. ii. 14 The Jews had..only a homogeneous lower-middle-class of Eastern European small-town origin. 1959 Times 30 Sept. 13/4 A lawyer who is by no means so simple and small-town as he makes himself out to be. 1964 R. Miliband in I. L. Horowitz New Sociology 80 A rural, small-town, one-man-one-gun America. 1969 A. Lurie Real People 105 Not a slick professional show like Saratoga; but very amateurish, small-town. 1975 Verbatim May 12/1 Can a small-town girl from Kansas and Indiana make good as a reporter in the wilds of Greater Boston? 1980 Times Lit. Suppl. 19 Sept. 1047/4 Pinning her characters..in small-town Oregon.., she uncovers the hidden principles and ambitions of little men and women as they battle against the smothering ordinariness of suburban life. |
So small-towner, an inhabitant of a small town, one who comes from a small town; small-townish, small-towny adjs., characteristic or suggestive of a small town.
| 1920 S. Lewis Main Street xxix. 353 It's dreadfully tabby and small-towny. 1931 H. Concannon St. Patrick xiv. 189 The smooth paths of a smug small-townish officialdom. 1945 Sun (Baltimore) 17 Apr. 1/2 A friendly, small-townish man of the Middle West, called suddenly to the presidency..by the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, [etc.]. 1969 Listener 5 July 3/2 The small-towners gratefully seized upon this idealised portrait, using it as psychological support and insulation from the cold reality of their dependence on the mass society. 1974 Small-townish [see Oregonian a.]. |