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backblock. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
backblock, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
backblock in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
backblock you have here. The definition of the word
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English
Etymology
From back + block.
Pronunciation
Noun
backblock (plural backblocks)
- (Australia, New Zealand, usually in the plural) A remote tract of land in the interior; hence (in plural) sparsely populated country far from major cities and lacking conveniences common in urban areas.
1931, New Zealand House of Representatives, Parliamentary Debates, volume 229, page 281:I speak solely for the backblock roads, and I contend that the time has arrived when the Government should turn its attention to the metalling of these roads.
1955, Helen Wilson, My First Eighty Years, page 185:It has happened in other districts that new settlement has turned the old centres into isolated backblocks.
1991, Robin Hyde, Gillian Boddy, Jacqueline D. Matthews, Disputed Ground: Robin Hyde, Journalist, page 225:Backblocks hardship is a very real thing, but Mary Scott expresses it somewhat too much in the Victorian ‘There′s a tear on your eye’ mode, little graves on the hillside and old servants, horses and dogs, faithful to the last.
2001, Richard Flanagan, Gould's Book of Fish, Vintage, published 2016, page 82:The weeping man was an emancipist who had a backblock in the next valley & sometimes came over to see his cobber the shepherd, both being Roscommon men.
- Land behind that which fronts on water; land without a permanent watercourse.