townie

Etymology

town + -ie

noun

1. (UK, US) A person living in a university area who is not associated with the university.
   Professional gamblers have a cushy racket in college football because old grads and even townies of college localities are sentimental bettors and easy to separate from their money. 1947 November, “College football business”, in Kiplinger Magazine, page 36
   School is an ivory tower on the hill; it nestles in the gated groves of academe. It’s residents do not mix with “townies.” 1994, Terry O'Banion, A Learning College for the 21st Century, page 11
   In Spike Lee's movie School Daze you play a townie who's very hostile to the college students from out of town. 2004, Terry Gross, All I Did Was Ask, page 336
2. (UK) A person who has moved from a town or city to a rural area. Especially, one who is perceived not to have adopted rural ways.
   [Hamlet] was only repeating the phrase of an ordinary English rustic when jeering at a “townie”—whom he suspected of being a gutter-snipe—that “He don’t know a hawk from a hernshaw”. 1914 June 6, Roper Lethbridge, “Village Words”, in The Saturday Review, page 737
   From being a born-and-bred townie from north London, to a 36-year-old part-time farmer and full-time businessman is no mean achievement. 1998, Ken Ashton, “Preface”, in Graham Irwin, A Farm of Our Own, page 8
   The term cockney originally meant cock’s egg or misshapen egg such as a young hen might lay, in other words a lily-livered townie as opposed to a strong countryman. 2003, Rob Humphreys, The Rough Guide to London, page v
3. (UK) A person familiar with the town (urbanised centre of a city) and with going out on the town; a street-wise person.
4. (UK, derogatory) A chav.
5. (US) A working-class citizen in a metropolitan area.
6. (UK, Australia, New Zealand, informal) A person who lives in a city or town, or has an urban outlook.
   Here I parted with my fellow-townies, whose home shed at Millhouses covers fields where I played as a child. 1949 March and April, F. G. Roe, “I Saw Three Englands–2”, in Railway Magazine, page 83
   The modern Aussie is a townie through and through. Australia is the least densely populated country on earth; it is also among the most highly urbanised. 1999, Richard D. Lewis, When Cultures Collide: Managing Successfully Across Cultures, page 191
   In the 1940′s, a social survey of Victorian country towns found a similar gap between the interests and outlooks of farmers and townies, and an underlying fear on the part of the townsfolk. 2002, Graeme Davison, “Rural Sustainability in Historical Perspective”, in Chris Cocklin, Jacqui Dibden, editors, Sustainability and Change in Rural Australia, University Of New South Wales Press, page 40
   In that sense, the townies, not the farmers, were the inheritors of a pioneer capacity for hard work. 2005, Marc Brodie, “Chapter 9: The Politics of Rural Nostalgia between the Wars”, in Graeme Davison, Marc Brodie, editors, Struggle Country: The Rural Ideal in Twentieth-Century Australia, page 9.9
   Earlier, there would probably have been a grudge match between two townies, or locals. 2008, Jim Sharman, Blood & Tinsel: A Memoir, Melbourne University Publishing, page 18