clay eater

American

noun

Usually Disparaging.

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

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.

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