back forty
1
9.6
- noun
- /bæk ˈfɔrti/
- US
:
parte trasera del terreno
- During the summer, we love to camp out in the quiet back forty of the farm, away from the hustle and bustle.
Examples
-
We buried him out in the back forty next to Mom and Jesse.
-
Oddly, I didn't see myself as a plantation belle burying the silver tea service in the back forty as the Yankees arrived.
Academic text (1991) -
The old barn sits at the edge of the back forty, where the grass grows tall and wild.
-
My dad often says he will take care of the fence along the back forty this weekend.
Synonyms
7
8.4
A remote forest area far from towns and roads
1
5.7
A remote wild area far from towns and roads
1
7.0
A remote place with few people and many trees
A rural area far from towns and cities with few people
Areas far from towns or cities where few people live and life is often hard
In wild areas far from towns and roads
Surface Forms
Morphology
The components give partial clues: 'back' signals a rear area and 'forty' is a number, so a learner could infer a rear parcel of land of some size. However, the phrase relies on a cultural/idiomatic convention (forty as a land-measure reference) and the fixed sense 'the remote part of a farm' is not fully predictable from the words alone, so it is not fully transparent to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Back forty comes from old American farms where land was often split into plots of forty acres, and the plot far behind the house was the back forty. That's why the term means the 'remote' or 'out-of-the-way' part of a farm.