Sunday, September 13, 2009

bucolic

bucolic \byoo-KOL-ik\, adjective:

1. Relating to or typical of the countryside or its people; rustic.
2. Of or pertaining to the life and occupation of a shepherd; pastoral.

noun:
1. A pastoral poem, depicting rural affairs, and the life, manners, and occupation of shepherds.
2. A country person.

What Ms. Morris appreciates most now is the mix of bucolic and urban: She can descend into the subway and roam the city, then spend hours in the botanic garden and "walk quietly home to check my tomato plants."
-- Janny Scott, "The Brownstone Storytellers", New York Times, May 15, 1995
In 1901 the Pittsburgh Leader focused on the more bucolic qualities of Springdale, noting "considerable acreage of woods and farm land, picturesque streets . . . and pretty little frame dwellings set amidst overhanging apple trees and maples."
-- Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature
St. Paul's was a private Episcopal boys' school outside of Concord, New Hampshire, sixty miles from Windsor, in the middle of a wooded, secluded, bucolic nowhere.
-- Ken Gormley, Archibald Cox: Conscience of a Nation

Bucolic derives from Greek boukolikos, "rustic; pastoral," from boukolos, "a cowherd; a herdsman" from bous, "a cow; an ox."

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