All 4 Uses of
provincial
in
The Idiot
- He had served, at first, in one of the civil departments, had then attended to matters connected with the local government of provincial towns, and had of late been a corresponding member of several important scientific societies.†
Chpt 2.1
- That same evening I stopped at a small provincial hotel, and it so happened that a dreadful murder had been committed there the night before, and everybody was talking about it.†
Chpt 2.4
- It appeared that they had known one another before, and had spent some time together in a little provincial town three months ago.†
Chpt 2.6
- He had been a provincial doctor; he had a civil appointment, and had no sooner taken it up than intrigues began.†
Chpt 3.6 *
Definitions:
-
(1)
(provincial as in: provincial attitude) unsophisticated (meant disapprovingly to refer to old-fashioned or narrow-minded attitudes and ideas)
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) Provincial can also mean "related to a province" or "related to the provinces." Its more literary meaning of unsophisticated originated as a pejorative term for ideas held in the provinces that were considered old-fashioned or uninformed by many who lived in the capital city.