Word.ws English Dictionary

hobbledehoy

US/ˈhɒbəldihɔɪ/

hobbledehoy noun: an awkward adolescent youth.

hobbledehoy: an awkward adolescent youth
Image: James Gillray (died 1815), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

hobbledehoy (plural hobbledehoys)

  1. An awkward adolescent youth.
    • I met a proper vpright youth, onely for a little ſtooping in the ſhoulders: […] & hee tolde me there was a fat filthy ballet-maker, that ſhould haue once been his Iourneyman to the trade: who liu’d about the towne; and ten to one, but he had thus terribly abuſed me & my Taberer: […] I found him...1600, William Kempe, Kemps nine daies vvonder
    • […]all the men, boys, and hobbledehoys attached to the farm[…]1836 March – 1837 October, Charles Dickens, “chapter 28”, in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1837, →OCLC

hobbledehoy meaning in Tamil

hobbledehoy in Tamil

காட்டான், வளர்ந்த குழந்தை

Examples of hobbledehoy in a sentence

  • A man rarely carries his shyness past the hobbledehoy period.1886, Jerome K Jerome, “On being shy”, in Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow:
  • Two hobbledehoys were standing by the forge staring in a bovine way at the proceedings.1895, H G Wells, “chapter 12”, in The Wonderful Visit:
  • He looked frankly what he was — a hobbledehoy — though he made great efforts to seem grown up.1912, Romain Rolland, “Morning, 2”, in Jean-Christophe:

Forms of hobbledehoy

pluralhobbledehoys

Origin of hobbledehoy

From Scots. Compare dialectal English hobbledygee (“(with a) limping movement”); also French hobereau (“country squire”), English hobby, and Old French hoi (“today”); the original sense may have been "an upstart of today".

Words formed from hobbledehoy

Questions about hobbledehoy

What does hobbledehoy mean?
Hobbledehoy means an awkward adolescent youth.
What is hobbledehoy in Tamil?
Hobbledehoy in Tamil is காட்டான், வளர்ந்த குழந்தை. See Hobbledehoy meaning in Tamil.
How do you use hobbledehoy in a sentence?
A man rarely carries his shyness past the hobbledehoy period.
What part of speech is hobbledehoy?
Hobbledehoy is a noun.
How do you pronounce hobbledehoy?
Hobbledehoy is pronounced /ˈhɒbəldihɔɪ/ (US).
What is the plural of hobbledehoy?
The plural of hobbledehoy is hobbledehoys.

Words near hobbledehoy in the dictionary

  1. hobble-ropes
  2. hobble-skirted
  3. hobblebush
  4. hobblebushes
  5. hobbled
  6. hobbledehoy
  7. hobbledehoydom
  8. hobbledehoyhood
  9. hobbledehoyish
  10. hobbledehoyishness
  11. hobbledehoyism

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hobbledehoy (page history and authors); hobbledehoy (Tamil Wiktionary) (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-hobbledehoy.wav.

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