backwoodsmann.
1. A settler in the backwoods. Also figurative.
ΘΚΠ
society > inhabiting and dwelling > inhabitant > inhabitant according to environment > country dweller > [noun]
countrymanc1300
landmana1400
Jack (John) Upland1402
rurala1475
rustical?1532
rusticc1550
Jock upalanda1568
John Uponlanda1568
rustican1570
countrywoman1679
country cousin1692
ruralist1739
country mouse1750
backwoodsman1774
back-countryman1796
mountaineer1837
ruralite1841
mountain man1847
smock-frock1858
way back1890
woop woop1936
swamp Yankee1941
1774 Earl of Dunmore Let. 24 Dec. (Colonial Office Papers 5/1353, Publ. Rec. Office) f. 17v These new injuries Stored up the old inveteracy of those who are called the back-Woods-Men, who are Hunters like the Indians and equally ungovernable.
a1793 P. M. Freneau Poems (1809) II. 20 To Crispin O'Conner. A Back-woodsman.
1798 Monthly Mag. Mar. 185/1 The Back Woodsmen, as the whites all along the interior line of the states are termed, are almost gigantic.
1803 T. M. Harris Jrnl. Tour 6 June (1805) Most of the ‘Back-wood's men’, as they are called, are emigrants.
1816 in J. Pickering Vocab. U.S.
1819 W. Cobbett Year's Resid. U.S.A. iii. 372 The habitual disregard of comfort of an American back-woodsman.
1834 T. Carlyle Sartor Resartus ii. viii. 64/2 An American Backwoods-man, who had to fell unpenetrated forests.
1884 W. James Let. 30 Sept. in R. B. Perry Thought & Char. W. James (1935) I. 697 My yoking of Renan with Zola may sound lacking in delicacy to French ears, but as a Yankee backwoodsman it gave me a malicious pleasure.
1905 E. W. Hornung Thief in Night 111 Raffles on his right hand, and the backwoodsman of letters on his left.
1958 Listener 20 Nov. 839/1 The struggles of men like Kepler and Galileo against the academic backwoodsmen in the university chairs.
2. In modern politics applied to a member of the House of Lords who rarely, if ever, attends meetings of that body, but is prepared on occasion to assert his political rights.
ΘΚΠ
society > authority > rule or government > ruler or governor > deliberative, legislative, or administrative assembly > governing or legislative body of a nation or community > English or British parliament > [noun] > Member of Parliament > types of member of House of Lords
law-lord1773
lay lord1863
backwoodsman1909
overlord1951
backwoods peer1956
1909 Daily Chron. 11 Sept. 1/5 This speech will undoubtedly encourage the backwoodsmen in the House of Lords to take strong action.
1928 Observer 15 July 10/4 It has been saved by ‘backwoodsmen’ in the Lords from undergoing the indignity of being inspected..by county councillors.
Derivatives
backwoodswoman n.
ΚΠ
1884 Higginson in Harper's Mag. July 281/1 A plain backwoodswoman..smoking her corn-cob pipe.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1885; most recently modified version published online June 2019).
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n.1774