{"id":6787,"date":"2012-03-24T11:01:14","date_gmt":"2012-03-24T11:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=6787"},"modified":"2012-03-24T11:01:14","modified_gmt":"2012-03-24T11:01:14","slug":"out-in-the-sticks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=6787","title":{"rendered":"Out in the sticks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the expressions we discussed this week at the French conversation group was <strong>out in the sticks<\/strong>, which is <strong>en pleine cambrousse<\/strong> (&#8216;in full countryside&#8217;) or <strong>au milieu de la cambrousse<\/strong> (&#8216;in the middle of the countryside&#8217;).<\/p>\n<p><em>La cambrousse<\/em> comes from the Proven\u00e7al <em>cambrousso<\/em> (hovel, storeroom), from <em>cambra<\/em> (bedroom). The sense of &#8216;province \/ countryside&#8217; perhaps comes from the slang of travelling entertainers (<em>saltimbanques<\/em>) [<a href=\"http:\/\/fr.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/cambrousse\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>The expression &#8216;in the sticks&#8217; was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.phrases.org.uk\/meanings\/in-the-sticks.html\">apparently<\/a> coined in the USA and was first used in the Florence Times Daily in November 1897<\/p>\n<blockquote><p> &#8230; he gathered from 1 1\/2 acres this year 21 barrels of corn. If any man &#8220;away in the sticks&#8221; can beat this, in the language of &#8220;Philander Doesticks,&#8221; we exclaim, &#8220;let him stand forward to de rear.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>At first it was associated mainly with baseball and &#8216;the sticks&#8217; referred to exhibition games played in county locations. Later it came to refer to any out-of-the-way location. <\/p>\n<p>Other ways to express this in English include &#8216;in the middle of nowhere&#8217;, &#8216;the back of beyond&#8217; &#8211; are there others you know in English or other languages?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the expressions we discussed this week at the French conversation group was out in the sticks, which is en pleine cambrousse (&#8216;in full countryside&#8217;) or au milieu de la cambrousse (&#8216;in the middle of the countryside&#8217;). La cambrousse comes from the Proven\u00e7al cambrousso (hovel, storeroom), from cambra (bedroom). The sense of &#8216;province \/ [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,111,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-french","category-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}