Countrifies

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To transform or adapt something to a rural or rustic style or appeal
2. To infuse an urban context with elements associated with the countryside or rural life
3. To make something more characteristic of rural areas, often by introducing simplicity or a pastoral aesthetic

Etymology: "Countrify" is a plain English compound: "country" with the suffix "-fy", from the Latin "-ficare" meaning "to make" or "to do". The verb therefore means, quite literally, to make something country-like, and the sense of pushing rural qualities into a town or city follows naturally from that construction. The base word has a longer and more tangled path. It descends from Latin "contrata", a term for land lying opposite or "against" one's own position, built from "contra" (against). That was borrowed into Old French as "contree", then into Middle English as "contre". Over time the word narrowed from a general sense of a region to the rural land surrounding a town, and English eventually settled on "country" as its form. So the verb carries a history in which "country" started as a word about being set over against something, and the ending added the idea of making the result into that thing.