OLD COUNTRY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does old country mean? 

• OLD COUNTRY (noun)
  The noun OLD COUNTRY has 1 sense:

1. the country of origin of an immigrant

  Familiarity information: OLD COUNTRY used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• OLD COUNTRY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The country of origin of an immigrant

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Hypernyms ("old country" is a kind of...):

country of origin; fatherland; homeland; mother country; motherland; native land (the country where you were born)

 Context examples 

That was in the old country.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Let me draw one last picture before I close the notebook—a picture which is the last memory of the old country which I bear away with me.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The largest landed proprietor in that part is a Mr. John Turner, who made his money in Australia and returned some years ago to the old country.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Great news this for that fierce old country, whose trade for a generation had been war, her exports archers and her imports prisoners.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He had not been home to the old country for fifteen years, Dennin explained, and it had always been his intention to return with plenty of money and make his old mother comfortable for the rest of her days.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

All equality of alliance must rest with Elizabeth, for Mary had merely connected herself with an old country family of respectability and large fortune, and had therefore given all the honour and received none: Elizabeth would, one day or other, marry suitably.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

“If I speak not fast, it is because I have not been from the old country as long as you. You do not like me because I am too much of a man; that is why, sir.”

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

It is not a scrambling collection of low single rooms, with as many roofs as windows; it is not cramped into the vulgar compactness of a square farmhouse: it is a solid, roomy, mansion-like looking house, such as one might suppose a respectable old country family had lived in from generation to generation, through two centuries at least, and were now spending from two to three thousand a year in.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

What I chiefly hope, my dear Mr. Copperfield, said Mrs. Micawber, is, that in some branches of our family we may live again in the old country.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The luxuries of the old country, said Mr. Micawber, with an intense satisfaction in their renouncement, we abandon.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)