pl.n. Slang.

1. Wild and dense brush; jungle.
2. Rural country; the backwoods.

[From Tagalog bundok, mountain.]

from Tagalog
This word originated in Philippines

If you're out in the boondocks, linguistically speaking, you're much more distant than the sticks, the backwoods, the hinterland, or the bush. In fact, you're in the Philippines. That's where the boondocks came from, during the American occupation that began with the defeat of Spain in 1898. In Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines, bondoc means "mountain," and the term was used first by the occupying U.S. military to mean the Philippine mountains ... or jungle ... or remote area of any sort. By 1909 it was already in Webster's New International Dictionary with those meanings. But in English it remained largely military slang until the 1960s. The Marine Corps especially made use of boondocks. During World War II the Marines began calling their heavy combat boots boondockers, and they have worn that name ever since.

About fifteen million people, one-quarter of the population of the Philippines, speak Tagalog natively. It belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family. The official language of the Philippines is a version of Tagalog with a more inclusive vocabulary, called Pilipino or Filipino. Pilipino, introduced in the 1970s, was so close to Tagalog that speakers of other Philippine languages protested. In response, in the 1980s the government allowed more non-Tagalog words and changed the name. Filipino's broader scope is indicated by its initial F, which was not in the original Tagalog alphabet but imported from Spanish.

Another English word from Tagalog is yo-yo, now the universally accepted name for a toy formerly known in English as a bandalore (1824, of unknown origin). Pedro Flores of the Philippines brought the name and the idea for a superior yo-yo (with string looped around the center rather than tied to it) to California in the 1920s. Donald Duncan bought him out, copyrighted the name yo-yo in 1932, and made it world famous. Tagalog has also given English some plant and animal names: abaca (1818, banana plant and fiber), ylang-ylang (1876, tree, perfume), lauan (1894, timber), cogon (1898, coarse grass), tamarau (1898, buffalo), atemoya (1914, fruit), and calamondin (1928, citrus).

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Anyplace out in the country.

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - udørk, bøhland

Français (French)
n. - cambrousse, maquis, (Mil) brousse, bled (arg)

Deutsch (German)
n. - rauhe/abgelegene Gegend

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (πληθ.) ερημότοπος, η εξορία του Αδάμ

Italiano (Italian)
eremo

Português (Portuguese)
n. - área (f) rural inóspita pouco habitada

Русский (Russian)
глухое место

Español (Spanish)
n. - monte, región selvática, región olvidada

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - bondvischan, bushen, bonnlandet

中文（简体） (Chinese (Simplified))
大丛林, 荒野

中文（繁體） (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 大叢林, 荒野

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 오지, 삼림지대

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - ジャングル, いなか

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮איזור נידח‬

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boondocks