Rural means relating to or characteristic of the country or the people who live there. Even as the word urban carries associations of chic and tough, rural suggests people who wear overalls and slur their words.
You may have known people who live on country roads––mail to their houses must be addressed to a rural route, abbreviated as RR. Rustic is a near synonym but emphasizes the supposed qualities of country people: being simple, awkward, and even rude and rough. The adjective rural descends from Middle English, from Old French, from Latin rūrālis, from rūs "the country."
