Rural

How to spell rural

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce rural

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does rural mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the countryside rather than the town or city.

Rural in a sentence

• The family moved to a rural village after years in the city.

• Broadband access remains patchy across many rural areas.

Where does rural come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This adjective comes from the Latin ruralis, meaning 'of the countryside', which was built on the noun rus (in its stem form ruris), literally 'open land' or 'the country' as opposed to the town. Romans used rus to mean the working farmland and fields beyond the city walls, and ruralis described anything belonging to that world of agriculture and rustic life. English took the word in during the 1400s, largely through the influence of Old French and learned Latin together, and it has kept its sense of 'relating to the country' ever since. The same rus root sits behind the more colourful word 'rustic', and behind 'rusticate', which once meant to send someone off to the countryside. The spelling trap is purely sonic: two clustered r sounds wrapped around a single vowel, so writers must remember the simple frame r-u-r-a-l with one l at the end.

How the word is built

• rur- (from Latin rus, ruris: open country, countryside)
• -al (adjective suffix)