country [ME] Country comes from medieval Latin contrata terra, meaning ‘the land lying opposite, the landscape spread out in front of you’. This is based on Latin contra ‘against or opposite’ and terra ‘land’, the source of words at *terrace. A country fit for heroes to live in is a phrase associated with the British prime minister David Lloyd George (1863–1945). In a speech in 1918, he said ‘What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in.’ A person from a rural background who is unfamiliar with, and alarmed by, urban life can be called a country mouse [M16th]. The allusion is to one of Aesop’s fables, which contrasts the country mouse with the streetwise city-dwelling town mouse. In the fable each mouse visits the other, but is in the end convinced of the superiority of its own home.