hillbilly
/ˈhɪlˌbɪli/
hillbilly noun: someone who is from the hills; especially from a rural area, with a connotation of a lack of refinement or sophistication.
Noun
hillbilly (plural hillbillies)
- Someone who is from the hills; especially from a rural area, with a connotation of a lack of refinement or sophistication.
- A white person from the rural southern part of the United States, especially the Southeastern states.
- Thanks to the massive migration from the poorer regions of Appalachia to places like Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, hillbilly values spread widely along with hillbilly people.2017, JD Vance, Hillbilly Elegy, →ISBN, page 21
Verb
hillbilly (third-person singular simple present hillbillies, present participle hillbillying, simple past and past participle hillbillied)
- To emphasize one's rural or humble upbringing; to use unsophisticated charm.
- Hillbillying troubadors, the bohemians of a new world, not cafe society but more like the poor white origins of an Elvis Presley.1991, The Commonwealth Review - Volume 3, page 189
- Like Ken Lay, [Rebecca] Mark came from a small town in Missouri, one of four children in a farm family with deep fundamentalist beliefs. Her conversational style has been polished in Texas, and she is a master of “hillbillying,” the trick of playing up one’s humble origins.2002 April 1, Marie Brenner, “The Enron Wars”, in Vanity Fair
- To portray or act as an uneducated and unsophisticated fool.
- I think that 20 to 30 years ago nonfundamentalists in America did make a great mistake by typing them, by hillbillying and backwoodsing and holy-rollering them.2001, The New York Times Biographical Service, Volume 32, page 1540
- God damned mother fuckin son of a bitch cock suckin' asshole, who the fuck does he think he is, that dumb ass, half-brained, hillbillied redneck, given me that Jew shit when he's coppin' money and nobody's got the balls to stand up to him and they're gonna let me take the rap?2006, Laurel Snyder, Half/life: Jew-ish Tales from Interfaith Homes, →ISBN, page 25
- To perform or experience stereotypically hillbilly-like actions.
Synonyms of hillbilly
19 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of hillbilly
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | hillbillies |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | hillbillies |
| present participle | hillbillying |
| past participle | hillbillied |
| past | hillbillied |
Origin of hillbilly
From hill + billy (“fellow”). Compare Scots chapman billie (“travelling salesman”).
Words formed from hillbilly
Phrases with hillbilly
Questions about hillbilly
- What does hillbilly mean?
- Hillbilly means someone who is from the hills; especially from a rural area, with a connotation of a lack of refinement or sophistication.
- What part of speech is hillbilly?
- Hillbilly can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce hillbilly?
- Hillbilly is pronounced /ˈhɪlˌbɪli/.
- What is the plural of hillbilly?
- The plural of hillbilly is hillbillies.
Words near hillbilly in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: hillbilly (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-hillbilly.ogg.
Cite this entry: “hillbilly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hillbilly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.