provincials

noun

plural of provincial
as in peasants
an awkward or simple person especially from a small town or the country the confidence man figured that fleecing these provincials would be easy

Synonyms & Similar Words

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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 provincials 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
Recent Examples of Synonyms for provincials
  1. peasants
  2. hicks
  3. countrymen
  4. yokels
  5. bumpkins
  6. rubes
  7. clowns
  8. mountaineers
Noun
  • Ong cited case studies by the neuropsychologist Alexander Luria, who traveled to remote villages in Uzbekistan and Kirghizia in the 1930s, when peasants were starting to receive rudimentary reading and writing instruction.
    — Rose Horowitch, The Atlantic, 8 July 2026
  • Andrei has taken up farming, and Miles eagerly joins him, hoping that the backbreaking work of scything will enhance his understanding of the Russian peasants he’s supposed to be writing about.
    — Heller McAlpin, Christian Science Monitor, 7 July 2026
Definition of peasants
Noun
  • 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
Definition of hicks
Noun
  • Before matches along the East Coast, thousands of fans from France, England, Panama, Argentina and other countries have filled Times Square to sing, cheer and wave flags with their countrymen and countrywomen.
    — Peter Sblendorio, New York Daily News, 5 July 2026
  • Athletes find a new gear when playing in front of throngs of chanting countrymen.
    — Michael Morris, Time, 1 July 2026
Definition of countrymen
Noun
  • 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
Definition of yokels
Noun
  • 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
Definition of bumpkins
Noun
  • The good news is that this future of an AI takeover is looking increasingly unlikely, at least at the industry’s current pace, a fact which is now dawning on some of the biggest rubes and dupes in the corporate world.
    — Joe Wilkins, Futurism, 8 July 2026
  • All those unsuspecting rubes with no idea what’s about to hit them.
    — Joe Hagan, Vanity Fair, 18 Mar. 2026
Definition of rubes
Noun
  • Perhaps most astonishingly, the movie manages to make creepy clowns — that shopworn trope — genuinely frightening again.
    — Declan Gallagher, Entertainment Weekly, 7 July 2026
  • Hang out with sheep, meet magicians and clowns and explore the amusement park.
    — Cole Premo, CBS News, 29 June 2026
Definition of clowns
Noun
  • Only, perhaps, a constitutional aversion to thinking ill of mountaineers.
    — William Finnegan, New Yorker, 29 June 2026
  • Built in 1879 by enterprising townsfolk, the Zermatterhof has been welcoming royalty, celebrities, and intrepid mountaineers for nearly a century and a half.
    — Alexandra Emanuelli, Travel + Leisure, 28 June 2026
Definition of mountaineers

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provincialisms
provincials
proving
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Cite this Entry

“Provincials.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/provincials. Accessed 16 Jul. 2026.

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