yokel
Syllables: yo·kel/ˈjəʊ.kəl//ˈjoʊ.kəl/
yokel noun: a person from or living in the countryside, viewed as being unsophisticated or naive.
Noun
yokel (plural yokels)
- A person from or living in the countryside, viewed as being unsophisticated or naive.
- They love the scenery near their summer home, but have no desire to mix with the local yokels.
- “[…] my opinion at once is […] that this [robbery] wasn’t done by a yokel―eh, Duff?”
“Certainly not,” replied Duff.
“And, translating the word yokel, for the benefit of the ladies, I apprehend your meaning to be that this attempt was not made by a countryman?” said Mr. Losberne with a smile.1838, Boz [pseudonym; Charles Dickens], “Involves a Critical Position”, in Oliver Twist; […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 181
- Synonyms:
- boor, bumpkin, country bumpkin, joskin, hayseed, hillbilly, hick, peasant, provincial, rube
yokel meaning in Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam and Punjabi
yokel in Hindi
- a person from or living in the countryside, viewed as being unsophisticated or naive
- गवार gavār, देहाती dehātī
yokel in Urdu
- دیہاتی, گنوار, نادان, اجڈ
yokel in Malayalam
- peasant, bumpkin, provincial
- നാടൻ, ഗ്രാമീണൻ, മലമൂടൻ, ദേശക്കാരൻ, കൃഷിക്കാരൻ, നാട്ടുകാരൻ
yokel in Punjabi
- a person from or living in the countryside, viewed as being unsophisticated or naive
- ਪੇਂਡੂ peṇḍū, پینْڈُو penḍū
Examples of yokel in a sentence
- […] and yokels looking up at the tinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers, while the light-fingered folk are operating upon their pockets behind.1848 June 28, William Makepeace Thackeray, “Before the Curtain”, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], →OCLC, page vii:
- "God damn and blast all you hamfisted yokels!" he was saying.1938 April, C[ecil] S[cott] Forester [pseudonym; Cecil Louis Troughton Smith], chapter V, in A Ship of the Line, Greenwich edition, London...
- I went to New York and bought myself a secondhand stretch limousine twenty-eight feet long, calculated to reduce the most blasé country-club sophisticates to bug-eyed yokels.1985, Peter De Vries, chapter 6, in The Prick of Noon, Penguin, page 119:
- You may think that because you live in Brahmpur you have seen the world―or more of the world than we poor yokels see.1993, Vikram Seth, chapter 8.6, in A Suitable Boy, London: Phoenix, published 1994, page 560:
Synonyms of yokel
22 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of yokel
| plural | yokels |
|---|
Origin of yokel
First use appears c. 1812, possibly from dialectal German Jokel, diminutive of Jakob, cf. Yankee (“little John”) and jacquerie (“a peasant uprising”). Alternatively, from dialectal English yokel, yuckle (“a European green woodpecker”), itself probably a variant of hickwall.
Words formed from yokel
Words that rhyme with yokel
Questions about yokel
- What does yokel mean?
- Yokel means a person from or living in the countryside, viewed as being unsophisticated or naive.
- What is yokel in Hindi?
- Yokel in Hindi is गवार (gavār), देहाती (dehātī). See Yokel meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use yokel in a sentence?
- […] and yokels looking up at the tinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers, while the light-fingered folk are operating upon their pockets behind.
- What part of speech is yokel?
- Yokel is a noun.
- How do you pronounce yokel?
- Yokel is pronounced /ˈjəʊ.kəl/ (UK).
- What is the plural of yokel?
- The plural of yokel is yokels.
Words near yokel in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: yokel (page history and authors); yokel (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); yokel (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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-yokel.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-yokel.wav.
Cite this entry: “yokel.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/yokel. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.