Pretentious Word of the Week, a Return

"Last week I was shocked and amazed." Maybe more mild than that.
"Last week I was surprised and insulted." Now that's more like it.
Last week I was suprised and kind of insulted whilst watching We Bought a Zoo. It is a really cute, family oriented, heartwarming movie. However, it was obviously written, or trying to express, the urban viewpoint. The family moved nine miles out of town. They lived a whole nine miles away from the nearest Target (or 15 minutes at 60 miles per hour), and boy did they ever complain about it. Goodness gracious, fifteen minutes there and fifteen minutes back. If that were in city there would probably be no issue.
In honour of the excess with which they complained of living, "in the sticks", today we shall compare terms and their meanings for things extremely rural. The dictionary of use shall of course be Webster's Third New International Dictionary; Unabridged, and Seven Language Dictionary, Volume1: A-G and Volume 3: S-Z. I shall also use the dictionary called my mother, because of course, she is so wise.

  • The "sticks" - "to saddle with something disadvantageous or disagreeable".
    • Honestly, although there was a whole third of a page dedicated to the word "stick", there was no such definition as such as we were looking for. Probably Webster's Third is too new for it, or considered it slang and therefore not worth printing. According to my source, the phrase, "In the sticks" comes from a European explorer newly come to Canada who thought our forests looked like they were made of sticks. Therefore, "the sticks" would mean forest.
  • The "boonies" - slang for "boondocks"
  • The "schtruck" - a Low German word for "way out in the country: lost"
  • The "boondocks" - "1: rough country: dense brush: JUNGLE: 2: slang: rural backcountry: STICKS"
    • Interesting note. Apparently "boondocks" was originally a Tagalog word adopted by english army personel in the Second World War.
  • The "bush" - "FOREST, WOODS, JUNGLE; a large uncleared or uncultivated area usually scrub-covered or heavily forested."
There you have it. They all roughly mean about the same thing. Just don't let anyone know it. Not if you want to be pretentious anyway.

And while we are in the dictionary anyway, on page 252.
Bonnyclabber - "sour thick milk"
Example: "I make my bonnyclabber by putting vinegar in the milk."