In "the sticks"
Helen Hurley
(in England) lives "in the Sticks".
Now he says I, too, live "in the
Sticks", although I live in Sweden.
Does all this make sense?
TakenEvent
"Helen Hurley" <He...@NO-SPAM.hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:dl1h12$ajp$1...@news.al.sw.ericsson.se...
Do you live in the woods? Is the place where you live quite removed from
the nearest "big city"? It's an urban term inflicted upon those who live in
places that are not so urban.
Helen Hurley
> > (in England) lives "in the Sticks".
> > Now he says I, too, live "in the
> > Sticks", although I live in Sweden.
> >
> > Does all this make sense?
> Do you live in the woods? Is the place where you live quite removed from
> the nearest "big city"? It's an urban term inflicted upon those who live
in
> places that are not so urban.
Yes, I live in the countryside: about 50km from the nearest town.
Jim Lawton
wrote:
Yes - it refers more to the perceived quality of life in the one place over the
other, in particular, I think that those who live in what they see as a more
cosmopolitan environment will refer to those living somewhere less so as "living
in the sticks".
So a Londoner thinks that almost everywhere else in England is "the sticks", and
a Mancunian the same - except for London. By the time you get to Huddersfield,
the sticks really are becoming the sticks - various outlying villages in the
Pennines.
Is "Hicksville" a bit the same Left Pond?
--
Jim
a Yorkshire polymoth
Lars Eighner
<dl1h12$ajp$1...@news.al.sw.ericsson.se>,
the lovely and talented Helen Hurley
broadcast on alt.usage.english:
Yes. Sticks is not a proper noun, and is not capitalized within
a sentence. "In the sticks" means in a remote area, far from
centers of commerce, industry, government, the arts,
intellectual or social activity. I am not sure what the origin
of this expression is, but it seems it originally implied a
rural area, far from the nearest city. Your colleague has
extended this metaphorically to say that you both are distant
from the center of activity of some field, and perhaps from
context, you know what field he means.
--
Lars Eighner use...@larseighner.com http://www.larseighner.com/
Turn pimp, flatterer, quack, lawyer, parson, be chaplain to an atheist, or
stallion to an old woman, anything but a poet; for a poet is worse, more
servile, timorous and fawning than any I have named. --William Congreve
Nate Branscom
I've heard "in the sticks" before, here in the US. Of course, my mind
could be playing tricks on me. How about "the boonies"?
-- Nate
Ross Howard
<use...@larseighner.com> wrought:
>In our last episode,
><dl1h12$ajp$1...@news.al.sw.ericsson.se>,
>the lovely and talented Helen Hurley
>broadcast on alt.usage.english:
>
>> According to a coleague, my friend
>> (in England) lives "in the Sticks".
>> Now he says I, too, live "in the
>> Sticks", although I live in Sweden.
>
>> Does all this make sense?
>
>Yes. Sticks is not a proper noun, and is not capitalized within
>a sentence. "In the sticks" means in a remote area, far from
>centers of commerce, industry, government, the arts,
>intellectual or social activity. I am not sure what the origin
>of this expression is, but it seems it originally implied a
>rural area, far from the nearest city. Your colleague has
>extended this metaphorically to say that you both are distant
>from the center of activity of some field, and perhaps from
>context, you know what field he means.
In BrE it's used for outlying suburbs of urban areas, too. If you live
in central London, someone from Ealing and Walthamstow would probably
live "in the sticks" from your point of view. Is this the same in AmE?
Would a Manhattanite call, say, New Rochelle "the sticks"?
And is "the sticks" more or less (in meaning if not in syntax)
synonymous with "boondocks"/"boonies" in AmE?
--
Ross Howard
Helen Hurley
Thank you everyone. Now I know.
As a matter of interest, we have here something similar:
A "08" (noll otta) is a "city dweller"
A "lantis" is a "country yokel"
Raymond S. Wise
Ross Howard wrote:
[about "the sticks"]
> In BrE it's used for outlying suburbs of urban areas, too. If you live
> in central London, someone from Ealing and Walthamstow would probably
> live "in the sticks" from your point of view. Is this the same in AmE?
> Would a Manhattanite call, say, New Rochelle "the sticks"?
>
> And is "the sticks" more or less (in meaning if not in syntax)
> synonymous with "boondocks"/"boonies" in AmE?
As Evan Morris puts it in the article on "boondocks" at his Web site,
www.word-detective.com ,
"The 'boondocks' is, as some of us know all too well, a slang term
meaning an isolated or wild region, the remote countryside or jungle.
In short, the sticks."
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com
Nate Branscom
Helen Hurley wrote:
> A "lantis" is a "country yokel"
It's hard for me to look at this and not read "Atlantis ...".
-- Nate
Lars Eighner
<jjo8n1p5hffcts4so...@4ax.com>, the lovely and
talented Ross Howard broadcast on alt.usage.english:
> On Fri, 11 Nov 2005 03:10:17 -0600, Lars Eighner
><use...@larseighner.com> wrought:
> In BrE it's used for outlying suburbs of urban areas, too. If you live
> in central London, someone from Ealing and Walthamstow would probably
> live "in the sticks" from your point of view. Is this the same in AmE?
> Would a Manhattanite call, say, New Rochelle "the sticks"?
Yes. But this would be more likely in discussing something like
nightlife. The resident of New Rochell is likely to be on Wall
Street in the daytime, and so isn't really so "stickish" in the
context of finance. But if you are director of the New Rochelle
Community Theatre you are certainly "in the sticks" by
comparison to Broadway. Come to think of it, I suspect "in the
sticks" began as theatrical slang.
> And is "the sticks" more or less (in meaning if not in syntax)
> synonymous with "boondocks"/"boonies" in AmE?
Yes. But "boondocks," I think, is less likely to be extended
metaphorically. Downtown Cleveland may be "in the sticks" but
it isn't in the "boondocks." "In the sticks" seems to have the
implication of cultural, social, etc. backwardness, while
"boondocks" more concretely suggests rough country.
--
Lars Eighner use...@larseighner.com http://www.larseighner.com/
War on Terrorism: Bad News from the Sanity Front
"Tactical nuclear capabilities should be used against the bin Laden
camps in the desert of Afghanistan." -Thomas Woodrow,_Washington Times_
John Dean
Somebody's going to have to post the headline from "Variety" (or
wherever it apocryphally was) so it might as well be spring I mean me:
Hix Nix Stix Pix
or
Stix Nix Hix Pix
--
John Dean
Oxford
Donna Richoux
> I've heard "in the sticks" before, here in the US. Of course, my mind
> could be playing tricks on me. How about "the boonies"?
The Dutch have added the entire English phrase "in the middle of
nowhere" to their vocabulary.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
ray o'hara
"Helen Hurley" <He...@NO-SPAM.hotmail.com> wrote in message news:dl1hvp$>
Yes, I live in the countryside: about 50km from the nearest town.
>
>
That is living in the sticks. It is a humourous slang term that's all.
In the U.S.A. someone might use the term boondocks. City dwellers fear
nature and are wary of any creature larger than a squirrel.
ray o'hara
"Lars Eighner" <use...@larseighner.com> wrote in message
news:slrndn8o14...@goodwill.io.com...
> In our last episode,
> <dl1h12$ajp$1...@news.al.sw.ericsson.se>,
> the lovely and talented Helen Hurley
> broadcast on alt.usage.english:
>
> > According to a coleague, my friend
> > (in England) lives "in the Sticks".
> > Now he says I, too, live "in the
> > Sticks", although I live in Sweden.
>
> > Does all this make sense?
>
> Yes. Sticks is not a proper noun, and is not capitalized within
> a sentence. "In the sticks" means in a remote area, far from
> centers of commerce, industry, government, the arts,
> intellectual or social activity. I am not sure what the origin
> of this expression is, but it seems it originally implied a
> rural area, far from the nearest city. Your colleague has
> extended this metaphorically to say that you both are distant
> from the center of activity of some field, and perhaps from
> context, you know what field he means.
Sticks is slang for trees.
ray o'hara
> In our last episode,
> <jjo8n1p5hffcts4so...@4ax.com>, the lovely and
> talented Ross Howard broadcast on alt.usage.english:
>
> > On Fri, 11 Nov 2005 03:10:17 -0600, Lars Eighner
> ><use...@larseighner.com> wrought:
>
> > In BrE it's used for outlying suburbs of urban areas, too. If you live
> > in central London, someone from Ealing and Walthamstow would probably
> > live "in the sticks" from your point of view. Is this the same in AmE?
> > Would a Manhattanite call, say, New Rochelle "the sticks"?
>
> Yes. But this would be more likely in discussing something like
> nightlife. The resident of New Rochell is likely to be on Wall
> Street in the daytime, and so isn't really so "stickish" in the
> context of finance. But if you are director of the New Rochelle
> Community Theatre you are certainly "in the sticks" by
> comparison to Broadway. Come to think of it, I suspect "in the
> sticks" began as theatrical slang.
>
> > And is "the sticks" more or less (in meaning if not in syntax)
> > synonymous with "boondocks"/"boonies" in AmE?
>
> Yes. But "boondocks," I think, is less likely to be extended
> metaphorically. Downtown Cleveland may be "in the sticks" but
> it isn't in the "boondocks." "In the sticks" seems to have the
> implication of cultural, social, etc. backwardness, while
> "boondocks" more concretely suggests rough country.
I can't imagine anybody calling downtown Cleveland the sticks. Sticks
implies trees and rurality.
R H Draney
>
>In our last episode,
><jjo8n1p5hffcts4so...@4ax.com>, the lovely and
>talented Ross Howard broadcast on alt.usage.english:
>
>> synonymous with "boondocks"/"boonies" in AmE?
>
>Yes. But "boondocks," I think, is less likely to be extended
>metaphorically. Downtown Cleveland may be "in the sticks" but
>it isn't in the "boondocks." "In the sticks" seems to have the
>implication of cultural, social, etc. backwardness, while
>"boondocks" more concretely suggests rough country.
Then what was Billie Joe Royal's problem?...in his song, "Down in the Boondocks"
is very definitely town; "sticks" is country....r
Salvatore Volatile
> In BrE it's used for outlying suburbs of urban areas, too. If you live
> in central London, someone from Ealing and Walthamstow would probably
> live "in the sticks" from your point of view. Is this the same in AmE?
> Would a Manhattanite call, say, New Rochelle "the sticks"?
Possibly, and possibly with a sense of irony, and possibly without one.
I've never actually been to New Rochelle, but it's one of those places
that sounds like it ought to be an archetypal suburb in the AmE sense,
when, as I understand it, it's at least somewhat closer to the French
_banlieue_ model. But recent AmE news coverage of the riots in France
seem generally to be referring to "suburbs", perhaps without too much of
a problem.
I'm reminded of an incident that took place in 1997, when I was in
Manhattan and speaking to a person who was most likely a lifelong New York
city resident, and I told this person that I was going to take the train
to White Plains, and this person says something like, "Oh, it must be nice
going up to the country".
Which further raises two issues: one, there's some AUE discussion between
me and Coop regarding White Plains in the Archives, and two, it might be
interesting to look into how Americans and Brits and miscellaneous define
"the country" in the "house in the country" sort of sense.
> And is "the sticks" more or less (in meaning if not in syntax)
> synonymous with "boondocks"/"boonies" in AmE?
My own feeling is that "boondocks" is more extreme, but they're pretty
synonymous.
This is rather timely, since a cartoon (= BrE 'animated') version of Aaron
McGruder's subversive comic strip (= BrE 'cartoon') _Boondocks_ has
recently made its debut. It's about a couple of African-American kids who
move from Chicago's South Side to an AmE-style bourgeois suburb (full of
white folks like Coop and Ed Asner) to live with their granddad. I think
there is some intentional AmE irony in the title -- most Americans
probably wouldn't regard such a suburb as "the boondocks".
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
> Jim Lawton wrote:
> > On Fri, 11 Nov 2005 08:25:22 +0100, "Helen Hurley"
> > <He...@NO-SPAM.hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> According to a coleague, my friend
> >> (in England) lives "in the Sticks".
> >> Now he says I, too, live "in the
> >> Sticks", although I live in Sweden.
> >>
> >> Does all this make sense?
> >
> > Yes - it refers more to the perceived quality of life in the one
> > place over the other, in particular, I think that those who live in
> > what they see as a more cosmopolitan environment will refer to those
> > living somewhere less so as "living in the sticks".
> >
> > So a Londoner thinks that almost everywhere else in England is "the
> > sticks", and a Mancunian the same - except for London. By the time
> > you get to Huddersfield, the sticks really are becoming the sticks -
> > various outlying villages in the Pennines.
> >
> > Is "Hicksville" a bit the same Left Pond?
Yes, but we have "sticks" too. I always thought it was American in
origin.
> Somebody's going to have to post the headline from "Variety" (or
> wherever it apocryphally was) so it might as well be spring I mean me:
>
> Hix Nix Stix Pix
>
> or
>
> Stix Nix Hix Pix
The first. Hicks are people, but sticks aren't.
Are you sure it was apocryphal?
<http://www.msu.edu/~daggy/cop/bkofdead/obits-bi.htm> attributes it to
one Claude Binyon (1905-1978) and dates it to July 17, 1935, so one
could check.
--
Jerry Friedman
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
Neither can I, but people from cultural centers like New York and
Austin may ineluctably associate places they consider backward with
trees (or cornfields).
By the way, Cleveland (Cradle of American Prestige Pronunciation) was
once known as the Forest City.
--
Jerry Friedman
Blue Hornet
Fifty km from the nearest town? You passed the sticks a long time ago.
You're in the boondocks.
Jeffrey Turner
If you live in Manhattan, almost anywhere else is the sticks.
Cleveland, like Dangerfield, don't get no respect.
--Jeff
--
The spirit of democracy cannot be imposed
from without. It has to come from within.
--Mohandas K. Gandhi
Sara Lorimer
John Dean
So you couldn't say "Suburbs reject planning proposals"?
>
> Are you sure it was apocryphal?
> <http://www.msu.edu/~daggy/cop/bkofdead/obits-bi.htm> attributes it to
> one Claude Binyon (1905-1978) and dates it to July 17, 1935, so one
> could check.
Allez-y
--
John Dean
Oxford
John Dean
> jerry_f...@yahoo.com wrote:
>>
>> Are you sure it was apocryphal?
>> <http://www.msu.edu/~daggy/cop/bkofdead/obits-bi.htm> attributes it
>> to one Claude Binyon (1905-1978) and dates it to July 17, 1935, so
>> one could check.
>
> Allez-y
I'm too impatient
http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=variety100&content=jump&jump=article&articleID=VR1117922332
"Sticks nix hick pix"
(Picture of the relevant front page included)
Note "Sticks" comes before "Hick"
There was a minor variation in "Yankee Doodle Dandy" where Jimmy Cagney,
as George M Cohan, explained to a bunch of kids what the headline "Stix
nix hix flix!" meant.
--
John Dean
Oxford
Salvatore Volatile
> [P]eople from cultural centers like New York and
> Austin may ineluctably associate places they consider backward with
> trees (or cornfields).
Possibly, if you define "New York" narrowly to mean (approximately)
Manhattan. No Brooklynite would particularly associate trees with
boondockness.
Default User
> Yes. But "boondocks," I think, is less likely to be extended
> metaphorically. Downtown Cleveland may be "in the sticks" but
> it isn't in the "boondocks." "In the sticks" seems to have the
> implication of cultural, social, etc. backwardness, while
> "boondocks" more concretely suggests rough country.
Just to be somewhat contrarian, the comic strip (and now cartoon) The
Boondocks takes place in the Chicago suburbs, on Timid Deer Lane.
Brian
--
If televison's a babysitter, the Internet is a drunk librarian who
won't shut up.
-- Dorothy Gambrell (http://catandgirl.com)
Django Cat
Just to clarify: you live *out* in the sticks.
DC
mirage
R H Draney wrote:
>
> Then what was Billie Joe Royal's problem?...in his song, "Down in the Boondocks"
> is very definitely town; "sticks" is country....r
In Billie Joe Royal's song, the lyrics (note the capitalization) are:
Down in the Boondocks,
Down in the Bookdocks,
People put me down 'cause that's the side of town I was born in.
Hence 'Boondocks' is a nickname for the part of town he was born in.
Boondocks isn't a town. Similarly, if he'd been born in a part of town
called 'the Swamp', it wouldn't mean that a 'swamp' is a 'town'.
-mirage
Donna Richoux
It says "the side of town," anyway. I believe that "town" got in there
because the songwriter wanted an easy rhyme to "People put me down".
I notice that the word is a rare borrowing from the Philippines, and not
long ago, so I suspect military slang.
Main Entry: boon搞ocks
Function: noun plural
Etymology: Tagalog bundok mountain
Date: 1930
1 : rough country filled with dense brush
2 : a rural area : STICKS
Donna Richoux
In English. Assuming you know no Dutch, it would sound like, to you,
"ya-da-da-da-da in the middle of nowhere ya-da-da-da."
Bill Bonde ('by a commodius vicus of recirculation')
"Made it, Ma! I'm on top of the world!"
Oh, wrong film.
izzy
>> "In the sticks" means in a remote area, far from centers of commerce, industry, government, the arts, intellectual or social activity. I am not sure what the origin of this expression is, but it seems it originally implied a rural area, far from the nearest city. <<
I think the origin is the Semitic root shin-tet-het SHaTaX = "to
spread" at a time when the het had a KS sound. Today the het has a
KH-sound. Compare the English and Spanish pronunciations of meXico.
This root occurs 6 times in the Old Testament:
twice in Numbers 11:32 -- ... and they spread [the quail] all abroad
for themselves round about the camp.
2nd Samuel 17:19 -- And the woman took and spread the covering over the
well's mouth.
Psalms 88:10 -- ... I have spread forth my hands unto Thee.
Jeremiah 8:2 -- ... and they shall spread them before the sun, and the
moon, and all the host of heaven, ...
Job 12:23 -- ... He enlargeth the nations, and leadeth them away.
Today SHeTaX means a geographic area or neighborhood. In Israeli
Hebrew, the expression "he lives in the SH'TaXiM" means "he lives in
the sticks", usually on the "wrong" side of the Green Line, that is, in
the Territories. But it can also refer to any outlying area, not near
any urban center such as Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, BeerSheva, etc.
ciao,
Israel "izzy" Cohen
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Just to be somewhat contrarian, the comic strip (and now cartoon)
> The Boondocks takes place in the Chicago suburbs, on Timid Deer
> Lane.
aka Notorious B.I.G. Avenue.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Now and then an innocent man is sent
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |to the legislature.
Palo Alto, CA 94304 | Kim Hubbard
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Lars Eighner
<dl2mv6$oqr$1...@news.wss.yale.edu>,
the lovely and talented Salvatore Volatile
broadcast on alt.usage.english:
> jerry_f...@yahoo.com wrote:
>> [P]eople from cultural centers like New York and
>> Austin may ineluctably associate places they consider backward with
>> trees (or cornfields).
> Possibly, if you define "New York" narrowly to mean (approximately)
> Manhattan. No Brooklynite would particularly associate trees with
> boondockness.
"Brooklynites (are) natural-born hayseeds."
-- G. W. Plunkett
--
Lars Eighner use...@larseighner.com http://www.larseighner.com/
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience
is only an adventure wrongly considered. --G. K. Chesterton
TakenEvent
"Django Cat" <nospam@please> wrote in message
news:kZWdndOjh7R...@brightview.com...
Somebody tell Warrant.
Brian Wickham
wrote:
>
>I notice that the word is a rare borrowing from the Philippines, and not
>long ago, so I suspect military slang.
>
> Main Entry: boon搞ocks
> Function: noun plural
> Etymology: Tagalog bundok mountain
> Date: 1930
> 1 : rough country filled with dense brush
> 2 : a rural area : STICKS
And is still used in the military, shortened to "Boonies" which dates
back to at least Vietnam.
Brian Wickham
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
> John Dean wrote:
> > jerry_f...@yahoo.com wrote:
> >>
> >> Are you sure it was apocryphal?
> >> <http://www.msu.edu/~daggy/cop/bkofdead/obits-bi.htm> attributes it
> >> to one Claude Binyon (1905-1978) and dates it to July 17, 1935, so
> >> one could check.
> >
> > Allez-y
>
> I'm too impatient
Merci. Vous auriez dû attendre beaucoup de temps, or something.
> http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=variety100&content=jump&jump=article&articleID=VR1117922332
>
> http://tinyurl.com/akvzq
>
> "Sticks nix hick pix"
>
> (Picture of the relevant front page included)
>
> Note "Sticks" comes before "Hick"
I like to make these mistakes so you'll feel better, in this case about
wrongly calling the headline "apocryphal".
I still think the other way around would have been a lot more like
English. The Google oracle agrees with me:
"Hix Nix Stix Pix": 2650 (some of which refer to a book by David
Llewellyn Burdett)
"Sticks Nix Hick Pix": 800
To answer your question about a headline that says "Suburbs" do
something, to me that would mean the municipal governments do
something.
--
Jerry Friedman
John Dean
> John Dean wrote:
>> John Dean wrote:
>>> jerry_f...@yahoo.com wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Are you sure it was apocryphal?
>>>> <http://www.msu.edu/~daggy/cop/bkofdead/obits-bi.htm> attributes it
>>>> to one Claude Binyon (1905-1978) and dates it to July 17, 1935, so
>>>> one could check.
>>>
>>> Allez-y
>>
>> I'm too impatient
>
>
>>
http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=variety100&content=jump&jump=article&articleID=VR1117922332
>>
>> http://tinyurl.com/akvzq
>>
>> "Sticks nix hick pix"
>>
>> (Picture of the relevant front page included)
>>
>> Note "Sticks" comes before "Hick"
>
> I like to make these mistakes so you'll feel better, in this case
> about
> wrongly calling the headline "apocryphal".
The headline I called apocryphal *is* apocryphal.
--
John Dean
Oxford
ray o'hara
"izzy" >
> Israel "izzy" Cohen
>
Not "THE" Israel"izzy" Cohen of Howlin' Commandos fame? can you get me Sgt
Fury's or Cpl Dum Dum Dugan's " The Boston Strongboy" autographs? can ya"?
please?
Mark Brader
> I still think the other way around would have been a lot more like
> English. The Google oracle agrees with me:
>
> "Hix Nix Stix Pix": 2650 (some of which refer to a book by David
> Llewellyn Burdett)
> "Sticks Nix Hick Pix": 800
It appears, to a first approximation, that it's only Burdett who agrees
with Jerry, or at least, is willing to "improve" the headline that way:
"hix nix stix pix" burdett 2,410
"hix nix stix pix" -burdett 248
Also, Burdett's word order is only common in one spelling, while Variety's
version is common in three, which collectively outgoogle it:
"hix nix stix pix" 2,650
"stix nix hix pix" 1,960
"sticks nix hick pix" 802
"stix nix hick pix" 304
Of the versions with the original word order, the "fully improved"
version with four X's is now the most popular (which doesn't surprise
me), and the actual headline ranks second. I also found these variants:
"hicks nix sticks pix" 32
"sticks nix hicks pix" 12
"hicks nix stix pix" 6
"sticks nix hix pix" 5
"stix nix hicks pix" 4
"hick nix sticks pix" 3
"hix nix sticks pix" 1
There were no hits on "hick nix stix pix" or any version with "stick".
--
Mark Brader, Toronto "Nix vix belix in chix."
m...@vex.net -- after Nietzsche
My text in this article is in the public domain.
izzy
idioms-by-transliteration-of-foreign-phrases infamy.
Do a Google search on < idioms Hebrew "izzy cohen" >.
Izzy Cohen, S/Sgt E6 (USAR)
BPMaps moderator
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BPMaps/