as in hicks
an awkward or simple person especially from a small town or the country
rural voters were tired of being treated as rubes by state officials, who showed interest in them only at election time
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of rubes
All those unsuspecting rubes with no idea what’s about to hit them.
—
Joe Hagan,
Vanity Fair,
18 Mar. 2026
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
Harry would be right to be bitter; Sally’s optimism was for rubes.
—
Alexandra Schwartz,
New Yorker,
17 Dec. 2025
Joe Hagan,
Vanity Fair,
18 Mar. 2026
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
Harry would be right to be bitter; Sally’s optimism was for rubes.
—
Alexandra Schwartz,
New Yorker,
17 Dec. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for rubes
Noun
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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.
Noun
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Karelian bear dogs were originally used by Finnish and Russian peasants as watch dogs and for hunting, according to the American Kennel Club.
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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.
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.
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.
Noun
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Hang out with sheep, meet magicians and clowns and explore the amusement park.
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The only leaders more buffoonish and lethal than the fairground hucksters elected in our failing democracies are the omnipotent clowns of tyranny.
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.
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.
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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.
Cite this Entry
“Rubes.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/rubes. Accessed 30 Jun. 2026.
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