as in hick
an awkward or simple person especially from a small town or the country though educated and sophisticated, the country singer always put on the facade of an amiable hayseed when in public

Synonyms & Similar Words

Relevance

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of hayseed Baby Billy’s first full-frontal scene is more a testament to Walton Goggins’s incredible hayseed bravado in the rule. Scott Tobias, Vulture, 31 Mar. 2025 Mantle was the voluble hayseed from Oklahoma who could hit anything but was corrupted by the big city, and wound up undone by alcohol and knee injuries. Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 21 June 2024 Today, the variety shows’ wise-clown hayseeds (overalls, prosthetic teeth, silly hats, no shoes) are the ones who get all the good lines, whose material is distinctive in its political sensibility and cultural hobbyhorses. Rafil Kroll-Zaidi, Harper's Magazine, 30 Mar. 2024 Lilly’s bequest was big enough to impress the hayseeds at the feed store, but, as the magazine’s editor, Wiman was making only sixty thousand dollars a year. Casey Cep, The New Yorker, 4 Dec. 2023 Grey Henson and Ashley D. Kelley as the gleeful Storytellers, Kevin Cahoon as a hayseed philosopher and Caroline Innerbichler as the requisite ingenue all joyfully indulge the cheeky, harmlessly off-color vibe. Peter Marks, Washington Post, 20 Apr. 2023 Sort of like how Axl Rose is some hayseed with chops like Chopin. Mike Postalakis, SPIN, 3 Aug. 2022 To share the workload, and also to teach him how to do everything, Jeremy brings on an uneducated 21-year-old blond hayseed named Kaleb who sports a series of increasingly dire haircuts as the series goes on. Kyle Smith, National Review, 8 Aug. 2021 Callum Scott Howells is another standout as Colin, a Welsh hayseed who’s wonderstruck by city life. Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 11 Mar. 2021
Recent Examples of Synonyms for hayseed
Noun
  • Sorrentino may also be exorcising some conflicting feelings about his birthplace, which is portrayed as a vulgar, crude place populated by crooks and hicks and photographed like its paradise.
    David Fear, Rolling Stone, 7 Feb. 2025
  • In first grade, when a teacher called him a hick, Ciotti threw an inkwell at her.
    D. T. Max, The New Yorker, 23 Sep. 2024
Noun
  • Much of the show's cast will be forever remembered as TV's favorite millionaire yokels, but The Beverly Hillbillies certainly didn't mark the end of their careers.
    John Russell, People.com, 11 May 2025
  • Florida yokels versus the elite Hollywood movie-star kind of group.
    Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 26 July 2024
Noun
  • Going to the Ron Burgundy–Ricky Bobby idiot well one time too many, Ferrell plays Cam Brady, a lazy, cynical longtime congressman running against a local bumpkin (Galifianakis).
    Tim Grierson, Vulture, 4 Feb. 2025
  • Carter, perhaps the most decent man to ever occupy the Oval Office, was long written off as a country bumpkin, one who perhaps unsurprisingly left office as a one-term anomaly.
    Philip Elliott, TIME, 9 Jan. 2025
Noun
  • What began in Manchester with an 1819 massacre of peasants gave birth to the world's first workers' movements, trade unions and an idea of equality that has fueled social justice and labor movements around the world.
    Lauren Frayer, NPR, 19 Apr. 2025
  • French peasants at work, rendered with maximum sentiment by the likes of Jean-François Millet.
    Blake Gopnik, Newsweek, 19 Mar. 2025
Noun
  • Not long after his ordination, he was named the Jesuit provincial for Argentina, which put him in charge of the order’s activities throughout the country.
    Carlos De Loera, Los Angeles Times, 21 Apr. 2025
  • The same year, he was appointed as a provincial for the order.
    Caitlin McFall, FOXNews.com, 21 Apr. 2025
Noun
  • The latest scheme is to create a 2.5% business-to-business tax, a tax hidden in the costs of businesses so that those rubes also known as voters may not notice it.
    Reader Commentary, Baltimore Sun, 18 Mar. 2025
  • Walsh’s male fantasists—the nameless rubes of Ballyturk, the desperate suitors of Penelope, even the heartbroken father at the center of Grief Is the Thing With Feathers—get to strut and bluster and scream into the wind.
    Sara Holdren, Vulture, 23 Feb. 2025
Noun
  • Matthew Davies, 41, was taken into custody on suspicion of assaulting a man with a glass bottle while dressed up as a clown on Oct. 31, 2018, according to a news release issued by the department.
    Vincent Moleski, Sacbee.com, 8 May 2025
  • In the ‘30s and ‘40s, there were all these clowns trying to sell things, and then there was Krinkles the Clown trying to sell cereal [in the ‘50s].
    Brian Davids, HollywoodReporter, 8 May 2025
Noun
  • Classical Rudersdal, Denmark, situated beside Copenhagen and along the open coast, exists in a perpetual tug-of-war between the rustic and the modern.
    Helen Shaw, New Yorker, 11 Apr. 2025
  • Off-mountain: Skiers who prefer to stay overnight in nearby Driggs, Idaho (a 20-minute drive from Grand Targhee) have a few rustic, albeit comfortable, possibilities.
    Lydia Mansel, Travel + Leisure, 30 Dec. 2024

Browse Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Hayseed.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/hayseed. Accessed 25 May. 2025.

More from Merriam-Webster on hayseed

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
Love words? Need even more definitions?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!