See subject. Stand in name for the middle of nowhere.
Timbuctoo is tragically in the news, and I thought of this later.
Sorry about Idaho, but that’s the way I’ve always heard it (NYC). I presume Idahoans don’t say it that way. But they might use buttfuck.
I’d be interested to hear if other languages have their own equivalents.
No idea, but I’ve always heard it as “Buttfuck, Egypt,” “BF Egypt,” or “Boofoo, Egypt.” (ETA, or, simply, “BFE.”) Never heard the Idaho variant.
Australians use “back o’ Bourke” and “beyond the black stump”. They don’t have negative connotations like some of your examples.
I’ve always heard it as “Bumfuck, Egypt.”
And don’t forget East Jesus…
And Woop Woop.
They don’t mean precisely the same thing either. “Back o’ Bourke” and “beyond the black stump” refer to remote locations generally. They’re more like a alterntive for “The middle of nowhere”. The examples in the OP refer to a specific remote city/town. To highlight the difference, you’d commonly refer to a town being beyond the black stump, but you’d never refer to a town as being in “Nowheresville”.
Originally US military, from about 1970 or so. Bumfuck Egypt.
Hmmm…
I recall hearing Buttcrack, Iowa.
And then I recall hearing, “It’s not quite Buttcrack, Iowa, but it’s in the same valley.”
Not quite the same thing, but as a synonym for “I’ve looked everywhere…” one that sounds cool is “I’ve been all over Hell and half of Georgia…”
The Bumfuck Egypt version is most familiar in these parts.
As far as I know, there is no Buttfuck in Idaho. However, Idaho does have Beaver Dick Park.
The connotation I’ve always understood for “Timbuktu” (or Tambouctou as it’s often written these days) is not so much “someplace in the middle of nowhere” but rather “a generic far-away remote alien city” with a dollop of 1001 Arabian Nights exotic mystique thrown in for good measure.
(In fact, I got the vague impression that one of the Arabian Nights stories, “The City of Brass”, might actually be set in Timbuktu, although I don’t think it actually says that in the story. Just some place far to the west (west of Arabia, that is).)
If you just want to imply someplace far away in Norwegian, you can say Langtvekkistan, literally Far-away-istan, which was popularized and possibly invented by writers for the Norwegian version of the Donald Duck comic books.
If instead you want to describe a place that’s isolated and backwards and where the people are just a bit inbred and suspicious of outsiders, you’d go with Indre Enfold, a play on the actual counties of Østfold and Vestfold and the Norwegian word enfoldig, meaning simple in the sense of “a bit slow”. Indre means inner - Outer Enfold is presumably along the coast and therefore has at least some contact with civilization, while Inner Enfold is an isolated mountain valley where strangers rarely go.
Bob Seger calls it Katmandu. On the Road again refers to a dark and lonely highway east of Omaha.
Nice references to being nowhere.
OED defines Timbuctoo as ‘the remotest place imaginable’. Earliest cite given is this one:
I was going to say, “Timbuctoo” conjures up images of somewhere remote but exotic.
The most common synonym for “Middle of nowhere” that I’ve heard around here is “Woop Woop”, which (IMHO) carries connotations of “nothing there except the pub and one of those tin windmills that draws water”. “Out bush” is another one but tends to imply the subject is actually doing something (eg work, hunting, fishing, camping etc) as opposed to simply being in the middle of nowhere, if that makes sense.
I’ve also heard people refer to “Bumfuck” (sometimes with Upper/Lower/one of the compass points as a prefix), “Nowheresville” and “The Fukawi” (as in “The fuck are we?”). Never heard of “Bumfuck, Egypt” though.
Bumfuck, Iowa. I have also heard the “Egypt” variant, however.
NZ has a real town named Erewhon.
(Just try spelling it backwards.)
My grandmother always said ‘whoop whoop’, as well.
“Podunk” doesn’t necessarily refer to a particularly remote or exotic place, but rather, to a completely boring and generic small town where nothing interesting happens. You probably could drive from Podunk to the big city in a day, except that nobody actually does.
Is it just me, or is podunk more of an adjective than a place name like Nowheresville: “another podunk town.”