hitchhike

/ˈhɪt͡ʃhaɪk/

hitchhike verb: to try to get a ride in a passing vehicle while standing at the side of a road, generally by either sticking out one's finger or thumb or holding a sign with one's stated destination. Also the alternative form of hitchhiker.

Image: Skelanard, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Verb

hitchhike (third-person singular simple present hitchhikes, present participle hitchhiking, simple past and past participle hitchhiked)

(intransitive) To try to get a ride in a passing vehicle while standing at the side of a road, generally by either sticking out one's finger or thumb or holding a sign with one's stated destination.
- She made a great many photographs, and hitchhiked her way back to Lanchow again, and thence to Peking.1953, Pearl Buck, “Preface”, in Irene Vongehr Vincent, The Sacred Oasis: Caves of the Thousand Buddhas Tun Huang, University of Chicago Press, page x
- Holly came from Miami, F-L-A / Hitchhiked her way across the U.S.A.1972, Lou Reed, “Walk on the Wild Side”, in Transformer
(US, transitive) To try to get (a ride) in this manner.
- Pamela hitchhiked a ride to New York.
- “I’m not goin’ to tell you what happened to me,” Asey said, “from the time I found her till I finally managed to hitchhike a ride to town. I want to forget that period of my life. […]”1945, Phoebe Atwood Taylor, Proof of the Pudding, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, page 42
(broadly, intransitive) To be carried along with something else.
- In genetic hitchhiking, a gene is propagated because it occurs in conjunction with a favourable mutation.
- In cultural hitchhiking, a cultural trait spreads with a technologically advanced population.

Noun

hitchhike (plural hitchhikes)

A journey made by hitchhiking.

Also used as

hitchhike is also the alternative form of hitchhiker.

hitchhike meaning in Tamil, Persian, Thai and Vietnamese

hitchhike in Tamil

to try to get a ride in a passing vehicle while standing at the side of a road: கெஞ்சுப்பயணம் keñcuppayaṇam

hitchhike in Persian

to try to get a ride in a passing vehicle while standing at the side of a road: اتواستپ کردن oto-estop kardan

hitchhike in Thai

to try to get a ride in a passing vehicle while standing at the side of a road: โบกรถ bòok-rót

hitchhike in Vietnamese

to try to get a ride in a passing vehicle while standing at the side of a road: quá giang

Examples of hitchhike in a sentence

I heard that hitchhiking was illegal, so I made sure to only stick out my thumb to noncops.
Keen and Easy Aces from their early evening periods on CBS, which also killed my cowcatchers and hitchhikes.
National advertisers have probably been major contributors to this practice through the use of so-called hitchhike and cowcatcher announcements.

All 12 example sentences with hitchhike

Synonyms of hitchhike

Forms of hitchhike

Verb
third-person singular present	hitchhikes
present participle	hitchhiking
past participle	hitchhiked
past	hitchhiked
alternative form	hitch-hike
Noun
plural	hitchhikes

Past tense of hitchhike: hitchhiked

Origin of hitchhike

From hitch + hike.

Questions about hitchhike

What does hitchhike mean?: Hitchhike means to try to get a ride in a passing vehicle while standing at the side of a road, generally by either sticking out one's finger or thumb or holding a sign with one's stated destination.
What is hitchhike in Tamil?: Hitchhike in Tamil is கெஞ்சுப்பயணம் (keñcuppayaṇam). See Hitchhike meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is hitchhike?: Hitchhike can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce hitchhike?: Hitchhike is pronounced /ˈhɪt͡ʃhaɪk/.
What is the past tense of hitchhike?: The past tense of hitchhike is hitchhiked.

Words near hitchhike in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: hitchhike (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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-hitchhike.ogg.

Cite this entry: “hitchhike.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hitchhike. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.