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Urban vs Backblock - What's the difference?

urban | backblock |

As a proper noun urban

is (uncommon).

As a noun backblock is

(australia|new zealand|usually|in the plural) a residential area remote from major cities and lacking conveniences common in urban areas.

urban

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Related to the (or any) city.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-05-10
    • , author=Audrey Garric , title=Urban canopies let nature bloom , volume=188, issue=22, page=30 , magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) citation , passage=As towns continue to grow, replanting vegetation has become a form of urban utopia and green roofs are spreading fast. Last year 1m square metres of plant-covered roofing was built in France, as much as in the US, and 10 times more than in Germany, the pioneer in this field. In Paris 22 hectares of roof have been planted, out of a potential total of 80 hectares.}}
  • Characteristic of city life.

    • Antonyms

    * nonurban * rural * bucolic

    Derived terms

    * urban crawl * urban culture * urban fabric * urban legend * urbane * urbanism * urbanite * urbanity * urbanize, urbanise * urbanization, urbanisation * urban renewal

    See also

    * Urbanus

    References

    *

    Anagrams

    * ----

    backblock

    English

    Alternative forms

    * back-block

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (Australia, New Zealand, usually, in the plural) A residential area remote from major cities and lacking conveniences common in urban areas.
  • * 1931 , , 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 .
    And here let me remark that I have discovered that nobody ever lives in the backblocks . It is always the other fellow whose lot it is to live there.
  • * 1991 , , 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.
  • * 1995 , John Frank Williams, The Quarantined Culture: Australian Reactions to Modernism, 1913-1939 , page 77,
    • Australia had ‘melodramas of the coarse kind in plenty to point to, most of them drawn around the imaginary romance of the backblocks ’, but of plays ‘throbbing and pulsating with the fire of real Australian life, holding up vividly a question or problem of our national conditions, there is not one’.