backveld
English
editEtymology
editNoun
editbackveld (plural backvelds)
- (southern Africa) Backward and unsophisticated rural areas.
- 1952, Doris Lessing, Martha Quest, Panther, published 1974, page 232:
- And how was she to know that one may live in London, or New York, a village in Yorkshire, or a dorp in the backveld […] but one behaves inevitably, inexorably, exactly like everyone else.
- 1979, André Brink, A Dry White Season, Vintage, published 1998, page 20:
- If it hadn't been for Susan he might have ended his life in some small, forgotten backveld village, quietly content to teach a bit of history and geography to one generation of school children after the other […].