Countryside

How to spell countryside

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce countryside

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does countryside mean?

1. nounThe land and scenery of rural areas, away from towns and cities.

Countryside in a sentence

• They sold the flat and moved to a cottage in the countryside.

• The train passes through open countryside for most of the journey.

Where does countryside come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a transparent English compound formed from 'country' and 'side', first recorded in the early 1600s to describe a particular tract or region of land. The 'country' element traces back through Old French 'contree' to the Medieval Latin 'contrata terra', meaning 'land lying opposite or before you', built on the Latin 'contra', which simply meant 'against' or 'facing'; the underlying image is of the landscape spread out before an observer. The 'side' element is native Old English 'side', originally meaning a flank or a long surface, which broadened to mean a region or quarter, much as we still speak of 'this side of town'. So 'countryside' literally meant 'the rural side or quarter of the land', and over time it settled into its modern sense of rural land away from towns and cities. The spelling is reliably regular because both halves are common everyday words, and the trickiest moment for a writer is simply remembering to join them without a space.

How the word is built

• country (rural land, from Latin contrata: land lying opposite/before you)
• side (region, area, from Old English side)