hitchhike
Americanverb (used without object)
verb (used with object)
noun
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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hitchhikesimple
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hitchhikessimple
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have hitchhikedperfect
-
has hitchhikedperfect
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am hitchhikingprogressive
-
are hitchhikingprogressive
-
is hitchhikingprogressive
-
have been hitchhikingperfect progressive
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has been hitchhikingperfect progressive
Past
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hitchhikedsimple
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had hitchhikedperfect
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was hitchhikingprogressive
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were hitchhikingprogressive
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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:
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
The event's organisers arranged for buses to take people from the road to the nearby city of Reno - but some people say they had to pay for rides or hitchhike out of the area.
From BBC ● Sep. 4, 2023
Joe had a job delivering groceries and would hitchhike home when done.
From Seattle Times ● May 13, 2023
Whenever it broke down we’d catch minibuses, or sometimes we’d hitchhike.
From "Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood" by Trevor Noah
It clearly hitchhikes on small liquid particles sprayed out by an infected person.
From Washington Times ● Sep. 26, 2020
A New Jersey girl leaves her boyfriend and hitchhikes to Hollywood to become a star.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 4, 2020
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
And I did not love “Homeward Bound,” last week’s episode where Hannah dumps Fran, jumps on Ray, and eventually hitchhikes back to New York.
From New York Times ● Apr. 17, 2016
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
At age 17, he hitchhiked for nine hours from Ann Arbor, Mich., to New York City to see Davis at the Village Vanguard.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 19, 2026
Mrs Sanchez said: "I can look back and laugh now that we hitchhiked to our wedding!"
From BBC ● Apr. 10, 2026
We hitchhiked into town on the truck that came to pick up the donations.
From Salon ● Feb. 15, 2026
Dale Chorman grew up in Painesville, Ohio, but hitchhiked to Alaska in the 1980s, his son said in an email to the AP.
From Seattle Times ● May 21, 2024
I hitchhiked up toward the swamp country between Mo-bile and Montgomery.
From "Black Like Me" by John Howard Griffin
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
In college he spent summers hitchhiking around South America, hiking to Machu Picchu and mostly ignoring warnings of guerrilla activity.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 23, 2026
That abomination pops out of an unsettlingly cheerful woman whose husband swoops in to offer the hitchhiking boy a ride.
From Salon ● Nov. 9, 2025
“I don’t care if you were driving a Bentley or you were hitchhiking to the beach. You knew the Craw and you loved the Craw.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 16, 2025
In a sudden flash, I remembered the hitchhiking Green Beret.
From "Boots on the Ground: America's War in Vietnam" by Elizabeth Partridge
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.
