townie

plural townies · alternative dated townee

1. UKUSA person living in a university area who is not associated with the university.

   In Spike Lee's movie School Daze you play a townie who's very hostile to the college students from out of town.

   2004, Terry Gross, All I Did Was Ask, page 336

   2 more examples

   Professional gamblers have a cushy racket in college football because old grads and even townies of college localities are sentimental bettors and easy to separate from their money.

   1947 November, “College football business”, in Kiplinger Magazine, page 36

   School is an ivory tower on the hill; it nestles in the gated groves of academe. It’s residents do not mix with “townies.”

   1994, Terry O'Banion, A Learning College for the 21st Century, page 11

2. UKA person who has moved from a town or city to a rural area. Especially, one who is perceived not to have adopted rural ways.

   From being a born-and-bred townie from north London, to a 36-year-old part-time farmer and full-time businessman is no mean achievement.

   1998, Ken Ashton, “Preface”, in Graham Irwin, A Farm of Our Own, page 8

   2 more examples

   [Hamlet] was only repeating the phrase of an ordinary English rustic when jeering at a “townie”—whom he suspected of being a gutter-snipe—that “He don’t know a hawk from a hernshaw”.

   1914 June 6, Roper Lethbridge, “Village Words”, in The Saturday Review, page 737

   The term cockney originally meant cock’s egg or misshapen egg such as a young hen might lay, in other words a lily-livered townie as opposed to a strong countryman.

   2003, Rob Humphreys, The Rough Guide to London, page v

3. UKA person familiar with the town (urbanised centre of a city) and with going out on the town; a street-wise person.
4. UKderogatoryA chav.

   Synonyms: synonyms at chav

5. USA working-class citizen in a metropolitan area.
6. AustraliaNew ZealandUKinformalA person who lives in a city or town, or has an urban outlook.

   Earlier, there would probably have been a grudge match between two townies, or locals.

   2008, Jim Sharman, Blood & Tinsel: A Memoir, Melbourne University Publishing, page 18

   5 more examples

   Bobby Wick stormed through the tents of his Company, rallying, rebuking, mildly, as is consistent with the Regulations, chaffing the faint-hearted [...] comforting the panic-stricken with rude speech, and more than once tending the dying who had no friends — the men without "townies"[.]

   1889, Rudyard Kipling, “Only A Subaltern”, in Under the Deodars, Boston: The Greenock Press, published 1899, page 148

   Here I parted with my fellow-townies, whose home shed at Millhouses covers fields where I played as a child.

   1949 March and April, F. G. Roe, “I Saw Three Englands–2”, in Railway Magazine, page 83

   The modern Aussie is a townie through and through. Australia is the least densely populated country on earth; it is also among the most highly urbanised.

   1999, Richard D. Lewis, When Cultures Collide: Managing Successfully Across Cultures, page 191

   In the 1940′s, a social survey of Victorian country towns found a similar gap between the interests and outlooks of farmers and townies, and an underlying fear on the part of the townsfolk.

   2002, Graeme Davison, “Rural Sustainability in Historical Perspective”, in Chris Cocklin, Jacqui Dibden, editors, Sustainability and Change in Rural Australia, University Of New South Wales Press, page 40

   In that sense, the townies, not the farmers, were the inheritors of a pioneer capacity for hard work.

   2005, Marc Brodie, “Chapter 9: The Politics of Rural Nostalgia between the Wars”, in Graeme Davison, Marc Brodie, editors, Struggle Country: The Rural Ideal in Twentieth-Century Australia, page 9.9

   1. AustraliaLewisNew ZealandUKinformalA person from Stornoway.

      Antonyms: maw

plural townies

1. diminutiveinformalrareDiminutive of town; synonym of small town.

   [W]e came within a Mile o’ Godlamin, a little Townie upo’ the Rod, […]

   a. 1744, “A Journal from London to Portsmouth”, in James Carson, compiler, Jemmy Carson’s Collections: Being a Revival of His Own Labours and Lucubrations, for Thirty Years Past; with Pieces upon Different Subjects, by Several Hands., Dublin: […] James Carson, […], published 1744, →OCLC, page 90

   3 more examples

   It [Govan] is, in fact, the most curious and eccentric little townie that we know, and always wears, to our fancy, a kind of half-fou’ aspect. At two places, the Fointhouse and the Ferry, it comes rambling down towards the river; […]

   1854, Hugh M‘Donald, “No. XIV.—Govan, Renfrew, and Inchinnan.”, in Rambles round Glasgow, Descriptive, Historical, and Traditional, 2nd edition, Glasgow: Thomas Murray and Son, published 1856, →OCLC, page 266

   The primitive little townie [Dunedin] lay all in the lap of that narrow bit of ground, about a quarter of a mile long, stretching from Stafford to Rattray-streets; […]

   1879, an Old Identity [pseudonym; James Barr], “Descriptive—continued”, in The Old Identities: Being Sketches and Reminiscences during the First Decade of the Province of Otago, N. Z., Dunedin: Mills, Dick & Co., […], →OCLC, page 27

   The village of Drumfiddes in those early days was a stirring little ‘townie.’ […] [T]he main occupation of its inhabitants now being to let their cottages for summer visitors; and it is wonderful how this new industry has transformed the external appearance of the ‘townie.’

   a. 1900, William Gairdner, “Drumfiddes”, in John Alexander Gairdner, editor, Glengoyne: Reminiscences of the Parish and Its People, volume I, Edinburgh: Privately printed, published 1900, →OCLC, chapter I (The Parish and Its Former Inhabitants), page 7

   Synonyms: townlet

plural Townies

1. A person from Charlestown, Massachusetts, (especially) a working-class person of Irish American heritage.

   By fall 1974, however, new impulses broke through and on September 25, three hundred Townies organized the Charlestown branch of ROAR

   2004, Ronald P. Formisano, Boston Against Bussing, page 123

   2 more examples

   Racial isolation is so strong that in the early 1970s there were only 388 blacks among the 38,488 residents of South Boston, and only 76 among the 15,353 “Townies” of Charlestown.

   1981, Laurence R. Marcus, Benjamin D. Stickney, Race and Education: The Unending Controversy, page 110

   There were also a few black families in the projects and some Italians who spilled over from the North End, but otherwise Charlestown was a homogeneous hill of working-class Micks and their families living in tight rows of colonial and triple-decker houses. The Townies. And every Townie knew everyone in Town.

   2015, Lisa Genova, Inside the O'Briens, page 12