All 6 Uses of
provincial
in
Of Human Bondage
- There were too many people, provincials with foolish faces, foreigners poring over guide-books; their hideousness besmirched the everlasting masterpieces, their restlessness troubled the god's immortal repose.†
Chpt 105-106 *
- And I must leave all this', he waved his arm round the dirty garret, with its unmade bed, the clothes lying on the floor, a row of empty beer bottles against the wall, piles of unbound, ragged books in every corner, "for some provincial university where I shall try and get a chair of philology.†
Chpt 23-24
- She was an insignificant woman of thirty, with a provincial air and a deliberately lady-like manner; she introduced him to her mother.†
Chpt 39-40
- It was not at all like the Paris he had seen in the spring during his visit to do the accounts of the Hotel St. Georges, he thought already of that part of his life with a shudder, but reminded him of what he thought a provincial town must be.†
Chpt 41-42
- He knew the existence of foreign painters in Paris enough to see that the lives they led were narrowly provincial.†
Chpt 49-50
- She was a large woman, with flaxen hair, and a boldly painted face, a metallic voice, and the breezy manner of a comedienne accustomed to be on friendly terms with the gallery boys of provincial music-halls.†
Chpt 107-108
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) 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.