Origin of the term 'country mile'?

Question

A 'country mile' is a term used casually in some areas of the English-speaking world to refer to a very great distance, but what's the origin of the term? Obviously 'mile' refers to what could be seen (from a human perspective) as a long distance, but why does the adjective 'country' combine to make it mean a very great distance?

Answer 1

There are two possibilities: either the difficulty of terrain makes a country mile harder to travel; or before standardisation, miles were further.

An example of the first from Frederick de Kruger's 1829 The Villager's Tale

The travelling stage had set me down

Within a mile of yon church-town;

'T was long indeed, a country mile.

But well I knew each field or style;

An example of the second comes from The Treasury of Knowledge and Library of Reference in 1850:

Robin Hood shot a full mile; and, according to his bard, a north-country mile was equal to two statute ones.

Answer 2

This is an interesting question. I don't have a citation for you, but I have always understood this to refer to the fact that going a mile cross country is much more arduous than the same distance over a paved road, with many more twists and turns, not to mention thickets, streams and what have you.

Answer 3

A country mile is an exaggerated distance. Mile is from the Latin for 1,000 paces [mille passuum] and has become standardized in English as 1,760 yards. The term "country mile" may be by analogy to a nautical mile (one minute of a great circle of the earth; fixed at 6,080 feet), an Irish mile (2,240 yards), a Scottish mile (various, including 1,976 yards), or it may be because the winding character of many country roads requires a long distance to be traversed in order to travel a mile as the crow flies.

Answer 4

A country mile is perhaps a far longer arbitrary distance than a proper mile for the considerably longer distances between homes and other settlements in the country than in less rural areas.

Answer 5

I ahve nothing but anecdotal evidence, having walked "a country mile." There are no mountains in the distance just flat lands. The distance seems to go on for quite sometime. It is an exaggeration of terms.