townie

See also: Townie

English

Alternative forms

• townee

Etymology

town +‎ -ie

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈtaʊni/

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aʊni

Noun

townie (plural townies)

1. (UK, US) A person living in a university area who is not associated with the university.
   • 1947 November, “College football business”, in Kiplinger Magazine, page 36:

     Professional gamblers have a cushy racket in college football because old grads and even townies of college localities are sentimental bettors and easy to separate from their money.

   • 1994, Terry O'Banion, A Learning College for the 21st Century, page 11:

     School is an ivory tower on the hill; it nestles in the gated groves of academe. It’s residents do not mix with “townies.”

   • 2004, Terry Gross, All I Did Was Ask, page 336:

     In Spike Lee's movie School Daze you play a townie who's very hostile to the college students from out of town.

3. (UK) A person who has moved from a town or city to a rural area. Especially, one who is perceived not to have adopted rural ways.
   • 1914 June 6, Roper Lethbridge, “Village Words”, in The Saturday Review, page 737:

     [Hamlet] was only repeating the phrase of an ordinary English rustic when jeering at a “townie”—whom he suspected of being a gutter-snipe—that “He don’t know a hawk from a hernshaw”.

   • 1998, Ken Ashton, “Preface”, in Graham Irwin, A Farm of Our Own, page 8:

     From being a born-and-bred townie from north London, to a 36-year-old part-time farmer and full-time businessman is no mean achievement.

   • 2003, Rob Humphreys, The Rough Guide to London, page v:

     The term cockney originally meant cock’s egg or misshapen egg such as a young hen might lay, in other words a lily-livered townie as opposed to a strong countryman.

4. (UK) A person familiar with the town (urbanised centre of a city) and with going out on the town; a street-wise person.
5. (UK, derogatory) A chav.
6. (US) A working-class citizen in a metropolitan area.
7. (UK, Australia, New Zealand, informal) A person who lives in a city or town, or has an urban outlook.
   • 1949 March and April, F. G. Roe, “I Saw Three Englands–2”, in Railway Magazine, page 83:

     Here I parted with my fellow-townies, whose home shed at Millhouses covers fields where I played as a child.

   • 1999, Richard D. Lewis, When Cultures Collide: Managing Successfully Across Cultures‎^[1], page 191:

     The modern Aussie is a townie through and through. Australia is the least densely populated country on earth; it is also among the most highly urbanised.

   • 2002, Graeme Davison, “Rural Sustainability in Historical Perspective”, in Chris Cocklin, Jacqui Dibden, editors, Sustainability and Change in Rural Australia, University Of New South Wales Press, page 40:

     In the 1940′s, a social survey of Victorian country towns found a similar gap between the interests and outlooks of farmers and townies, and an underlying fear on the part of the townsfolk.

   • 2005, Marc Brodie, “Chapter 9: The Politics of Rural Nostalgia between the Wars”, in Graeme Davison, Marc Brodie, editors, Struggle Country: The Rural Ideal in Twentieth-Century Australia, page 9.9:

     In that sense, the townies, not the farmers, were the inheritors of a pioneer capacity for hard work.

   • 2008, Jim Sharman, Blood & Tinsel: A Memoir, Melbourne University Publishing, page 18:

     Earlier, there would probably have been a grudge match between two townies, or locals.

Synonyms

• (chav): See synonyms at chav.

Antonyms

• (antonym(s) of “person who lives in a city or town or has an urban outlook”): cocky ("farmer")

See also

• barnie
• Town and gown on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• twonie