hitchhike
Americanverb (used without object)
-
hitchhikes,
present (3rd person singular)
-
hitchhiked,
past participle, past
-
hitchhiking
present participle
verb (used with object)
-
hitchhikes,
present (3rd person singular)
-
hitchhiked,
past participle, past
-
hitchhiking
present participle
noun
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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hitchhikesimple
-
hitchhikessimple
-
have hitchhikedperfect
-
has hitchhikedperfect
-
am hitchhikingprogressive
-
are hitchhikingprogressive
-
is hitchhikingprogressive
-
have been hitchhikingperfect progressive
-
has been hitchhikingperfect progressive
Past
-
hitchhikedsimple
-
had hitchhikedperfect
-
was hitchhikingprogressive
-
were hitchhikingprogressive
-
had been hitchhikingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of hitchhike
Explanation
To hitchhike is to get a free ride from a passing car. If you see someone standing alongside the highway raising a thumb, chances are that person is hitchhiking, not just expressing approval of your driving style. In the past, it wasn't unheard of for people to hitchhike across the country, but it's much less common today. If you hitchhike, you typically stand beside a road or highway with one thumb pointed up. The hope for a hitchhiker is that a car will stop and its driver will provide a free ride. While for many people, hitchhiking was once considered a reasonable way to travel, today it's illegal in some places and generally thought of as dangerous. The word hitchhike dates from the 1920s.
Vocabulary lists containing hitchhike
"Hitching a Ride"
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From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
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Miracle's Boys
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The pest has shown a remarkable ability to spread quickly and hitchhike, with dead specimens being found as close as Oregon and California.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 7, 2023
While diving, he saw a shark with a remora—a fish which uses suction to hitchhike on larger species—attached to its body, and he had an idea.
From National Geographic ● Oct. 23, 2023
Horsehair worms are born in water and use aquatic insects like mayflies to hitchhike to dry land, where they sit tight until they are eaten by terrestrial insects such as crickets or mantises.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 19, 2023
Police believed she had tried to hitchhike her way home.
From BBC ● May 14, 2023
Mr. Merriweather could not drive, and if their dissension reached the acrimonious, Mrs. Merriweather would stop the car and hitchhike to town.
From "Go Set a Watchman: A Novel" by Harper Lee
The scientists hope their work will prompt Arctic communities to mull new ways to manage sewage and the trash that hitchhikes through it.
From New York Times ● Sep. 28, 2021
It clearly hitchhikes on small liquid particles sprayed out by an infected person.
From Washington Times ● Sep. 26, 2020
A determined woman hitchhikes with a widower and his 12-year-old daughter to reach her wedding on Christmas Eve.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 18, 2019
RAQQA, Syria — Every three or four days, Fatima Mahmoud hitchhikes 37 miles across a hilly expanse of northeastern Syria to her home town of Raqqa.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 19, 2018
He wants a ride somewhere and all the nearby Ubers are booked; he ingeniously hitchhikes with a Papa John’s deliveryman.
From Slate ● Apr. 30, 2015
This generation, who as young adults hitchhiked across the country and backpacked through Europe, now is going on safaris and hiking in the Serengeti on guided tours that offer “easy” as well as “challenging” options.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 15, 2026
We hitchhiked into town on the truck that came to pick up the donations.
From Salon ● Feb. 15, 2026
He said he "hitchhiked to get there, and had a tent, a dream, and three cans of Heinz sausages and beans".
From BBC ● Sep. 11, 2025
As a teen, he hitchhiked to Los Angeles, using money that he’d saved from working as a movie theater usher and in other small jobs.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 27, 2024
Once a week he hitchhiked to Chamisaville for lunch with the other volunteers, and for a shower at the KOA Kampgrounds a mile north of town.
From "The Milagro Beanfield War" by John Nichols
“Down South” chronicles a hitchhiking trip on which Mr. McCartney and George Harrison bonded over guitars and rock ’n’ roll.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 3, 2026
Later, on the country rock-tinged Down South, he writes about hitchhiking across Europe with his bandmates in the early 1960s.
From BBC ● May 27, 2026
Indeed, history is filled with examples of this, from the medieval Black Death hitchhiking along the Silk Road to the “Russian flu” pandemic of the late 19th century that was accelerated by trains and steamships.
From Salon ● Feb. 28, 2026
One shows the couple with the hitchhiking ghosts from the famous finish of Disney’s Haunted Mansion ride.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 18, 2025
I decided I'd just see old Phoebe and sort of say good- by to her and all, and give her back her Christmas dough, and then I'd start hitchhiking my way out West.
From "The Catcher in the Rye" by J. D. Salinger
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
