Yokels

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Individuals from rural areas who are perceived as unsophisticated or lacking in social refinement
2. People characterized by a simple, often uneducated lifestyle typically associated with countrified regions
3. Residents of the countryside stereotypically viewed as naïve or lacking in worldly experience

Etymology: "Yokels" is the plural of "yokel", and the singular's origin is genuinely uncertain. Its first recorded use dates to about 1812, but no one has pinned down where it came from. One suggestion links it to a dialect German word, "Jokel", a diminutive of "Jakob" (roughly "little Jack"). That would make it a close cousin of "Yankee", itself possibly drawn from a Dutch diminutive of a male name, and of "jacquerie", the name for a French peasant uprising, which took its label from the common peasant name "Jacques". The other proposal looks closer to home. In dialect English, "yokel" or "yuckle" was a name for the European green woodpecker, a bird also known by a variant of "hickwall". On this view, a rustic countryman was compared to a bird of the hedgerows, and the comparison stuck.

Synonyms: hicks, bumpkins, rubes