hitchhike
Americanverb (used without object)
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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:
As a truck approaches, she attempts to hitchhike from the side of a desert road, only to strike out.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 3, 2025
It took Paul Simon four days to hitchhike from Saginaw, or so he sang in America, his iconic soundscape ballad of the 1960s with its lost souls on the highways of a country in flux.
From BBC ● Sep. 11, 2024
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
“The train! Can’t we even hitchhike to New York?”
From "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" by E.L. Konigsburg
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
She runs away from home, hitchhikes and is picked up by a hearse, driven by Divine in a rare male role.
From New York Times ● Nov. 13, 2015
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
Somehow they hitchhiked to find a rental car and drove cross-country to Warren Wilson College in western North Carolina, where I still live and teach environmental education.
From Los Angeles Times ● 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
"Remember," I said, "that time you hitchhiked back to college with me after Skit Night?"
From "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath
Meanwhile, songs like “Down South” brim with nostalgia for days gone by — in this instance, memories of a hitchhiking jaunt with Harrison.
From Salon ● May 12, 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
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
These "hitchhiking intruders" have included a tree frog that emerged from roses at a florist's shop in Sheffield and snakes discovered in ornamental olive trees shipped across mainland Europe.
From BBC ● Jan. 16, 2025
My parents had always cautioned me against hitchhiking.
From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides
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.
