Word.ws English Dictionary

old country

old country noun: the country of origin of an immigrant or of a person of immigrant descent.

Noun (1)

old country (plural old countries)

  1. The country of origin of an immigrant or of a person of immigrant descent.
    • "Look at all the children!" Saxon cried. "School's letting out. And nearly all are Portuguese, Billy, NOT Porchugeeze. Mercedes taught me the right way."
      "They never wore glad rags like them in the old country," Billy sneered. "They had to come over here to get decent clothes and decent grub."1913, Jack London, Valley Of The Moon, book 3, ch. 1

Noun (2) capitalized: Old Country

the Old Country

  1. (alternative) Alternative form of old country.
    • She was travelling first-class with some Lord or Duke from the ‘Old Country.’1933, Frank Clune, Try Anything Once, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 25
    • Similar to these were songs with nostalgic texts about longing for the Old Country.2001, The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music: North America. Garland Publishing. Ellen Koskoff (Ed.). Pg. 815

Forms of old country

pluralold countries

Questions about old country

What does old country mean?
Old country means the country of origin of an immigrant or of a person of immigrant descent.
What part of speech is old country?
Old country is a noun.
What is the plural of old country?
The plural of old country is old countries.

Words near old country in the dictionary

  1. Old Comedy
  2. Old Comic
  3. Old Cornish
  4. Old Coulsdon
  5. old countries
  6. old country
  7. Old Covenant
  8. Old Crow
  9. Old Cumnock
  10. Old Czech
  11. Old Dalby

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: old country (page history and authors); Old Country (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “old country.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/old_country. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.