yokel
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of yokel
First recorded in 1805–15; origin uncertain
Explanation
Yokel is a disparaging name for someone from a small town or the countryside. To call someone a yokel is to imply that they are unsophisticated, uneducated, and probably dim-witted. Before the age of internet and television, if you grew up in a small town or on a farm, you probably wouldn’t have known about the latest fashions of Paris and Milan or the best restaurants in New York. Even now, if you live in a remote place, you may have a somewhat provincial understanding of the world. If so, when you visit the Big City an unkind “city slicker” may call you a yokel.
Vocabulary lists containing yokel
100 SAT words Beginning with W,X,Y, and Z
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"The Canterbury Tales" by Geoffrey Chaucer, The Pardoner's Prologue
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The Odyssey
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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.
Reviewers varyingly called it "Oscar-Season B.S.," "woefully misguided," "Yokel Hokum," "laughably bad" and simply "awful."
From Salon • Dec. 5, 2020
Jeff Yokel, who spent 17 years in senior positions in DFAS's Cleveland office before retiring in 2009, says supervisors were required to approve every "plug" - thousands a month.
From Reuters • Nov. 18, 2013
I was recently introduced to a company called Local Yokel Media, a digital advertising start-up in the hyper-local market.
From Forbes • Nov. 26, 2012
Local Yokel is trying to solve this problem by signing up thousands of local publishers and aggregating and organizing their ad availabilities.
From Forbes • Nov. 26, 2012
Our two poor cousins, Kasper and Yokel, are already going to lose their lives in Spain for this Emperor, and now he comes to ask us for the younger ones.
From The Conscript A Story of the French war of 1813 by Erckmann-Chatrian
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.
