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clay eater

American  

noun

Usually Disparaging.

  1. (in the South Atlantic States) a term used to refer to a poor, uneducated person from a rural area.

Sensitive Note

This term refers to the eating of clay-rich dirt, a persistent custom among poor white and Black people in some rural areas of the South.

Etymology

Origin of clay eater

An Americanism dating back to 1835–45

Definitions 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.