rustication

Other forms: rustications

When you pack up your city apartment and move to the country, you can call it rustication — it's a term that can have positive or negative associations, depending on how excited you are about living in the boonies.

The noun rustication is good for what your grandfather did when he retired to a rural town to become a gentleman farmer. You can also describe your grudging attendance at a summer camp deep in the Maine woods as your own rustication. Whether by choice or banishment, rustication is a move to the countryside. The Latin root is rusticus, "open land or country."

Definitions of rustication

1. noun

   the condition naturally attaching to life in the country
   type of:

   condition, status

   a state at a particular time
2. noun

   the action of retiring to and living in the country
   type of:

   retirement

   withdrawal from your position or occupation
3. noun

   banishment into the country
   type of:

   banishment, proscription

   rejection by means of an act of banishing or proscribing someone
4. noun

   the construction of masonry or brickwork in a rustic manner
   type of:

   building, construction

   the act of constructing something
5. noun

   temporary dismissal of a student from a university
   type of:

   suspension, temporary removal

   a temporary debarment (from a privilege or position etc)