as in bumpkins
an awkward or simple person especially from a small town or the country
city dwellers who looked down on their cousins from northern Maine as hicks
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Recent Examples of hicks
So a bunch of hicks from Topeka were left up to our own devices of going down to Robert Hall and finding something that might be kind of cool.
—
Devon Ivie, Vulture, 8 Apr. 2026
Devon Ivie, Vulture, 8 Apr. 2026
Recent Examples of Synonyms for hicks
Noun
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Simply put, the small-town bumpkins from North Florida who support this idea should be made to pay for it.—
Sun Sentinel Editorial Board,
Sun Sentinel,
18 Feb. 2026
Noun
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It was left to the feds in Boston to arrest Farwell, after Meatball’s local yokels adamantly refused to do anything other than try to broom the crime by one of their own.—
Howie Carr,
Boston Herald,
26 Apr. 2026
Noun
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In the early nineteenth century, after Egyptian peasants happened upon ancient fragments, archaeologists began to look in such places for pieces of manuscript, which could vary in size from a few letters to a slice of text.—
Madeleine Schwartz,
The New York Review of Books,
6 June 2026
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The painting shows a lush, verdant Italian landscape, whose richness allows even peasants to enjoy leisurely strolls along its paths.—
Tyler Green,
The Atlantic,
21 May 2026
Noun
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Bunch of virtue signaling clowns!—
Zach Dean OutKick,
FOXNews.com,
15 June 2026
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The tumbles and trust falls might start to scare you, but this is hardly these clowns’ first rodeo.—
Sara Holdren,
Vulture,
14 June 2026
Noun
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All those unsuspecting rubes with no idea what’s about to hit them.—
Joe Hagan,
Vanity Fair,
18 Mar. 2026
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That set-up makes Cole relatively unique among prediction markets’ headliners, many of whom are suspected of exploiting insider info to dupe rubes for short-term gains.—
Joe Wilkins,
Futurism,
26 Feb. 2026
Noun
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Duke Slater, pal of Jim Nabors’ hayseed Gomer Pyle on the ’60s sitcom of that name, died of natural causes today at UCLA Hospital in Los Angeles.—
Greg Evans,
Deadline,
12 June 2026
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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
Noun
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Marlowe, the son of a poor Canterbury cobbler, and Shakespeare, the son of a Stratford glover and alderman, were both unlikely artistic geniuses, provincials in a nation in which social class was rigidly fixed.—
Heller McAlpin,
Christian Science Monitor,
10 Sep. 2025
Noun
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Gelje is one the world’s most renowned mountaineers, with a high-altitude career that includes summiting all 14 of the 8,000-meter peaks.—
Helen Regan,
CNN Money,
30 May 2026
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The film follows both the mountaineers caught in the storm and the rescue teams racing against time to save them.—
Emiliano de Pablos,
Variety,
15 May 2026
Cite this Entry
“Hicks.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/hicks. Accessed 18 Jun. 2026.
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