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The origins of yokel are uncertain, but it might have come from the dialectal English word yokel used as the name for the green woodpecker (the nickname is of imitative origin). Other words for supposedly naive country folk are chawbacon (from chaw, meaning "chew," and bacon), hayseed (which has obvious connections to country life), and clodhopper (indicating a clumsy, heavy-footed rustic). But city slickers don't always have the last word: rural folk have had their share of labels for city-dwellers too. One simple example is the often disparaging use of the adjective citified. A more colorful (albeit historical) example is cockney, which literally means "cocks' egg," or more broadly "misshapen egg." In the past, this word often designated a spoiled or foppish townsman—as opposed to the sturdy countryman, that is.
Examples of yokel in a Sentence
Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 26 July 2024
Ben’s refusal to stand down for a middle-aged white man seeking to wrest power from him was radical, as was the film’s ending, in which the hero was shot by yokels failing to distinguish him from the zombies previously described as animals.
—Richard Newby, The Hollywood Reporter, 23 Oct. 2024
John Elway would sooner crowd surf with the yokels in Oakland’s Black Hole than tank a season.
—Sean Keeler, The Denver Post, 1 Sep. 2024
Their argument could really be rephrased thusly: If stunts got an Oscar, these ignorant yokels will maim and kill themselves breathlessly racing each other for a fancy gold statue.
—Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 30 May 2024
Trujillo reimagines the sentimental yokels of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, as fervent, travel-ready fundamentalists.
—oregonlive, 5 Sep. 2023
And, with perhaps the canniest remark on the design’s yokel-ness, someone else claimed to have seen the new logo wandering around Rockefeller Center asking for the Christmas tree.
—Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 23 Mar. 2023
The team brings up a yokel from the minor leagues, Shane (Michael Oberholtzer), to relieve him, and Shane’s gruesome, heartfelt (and English-language) bigotry finally shakes the team to its roots.
—Helen Shaw, Vulture, 4 Apr. 2022
The first comic, Charles F. Browne, hit the lecture circuit in 1861 and adopted the pseudonymous persona of a country yokel named Artemus Ward.
—Harry Bruinius, The Christian Science Monitor, 29 Nov. 2021
Cite this Entry
“Yokel.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/yokel. Accessed 3 Mar. 2025.
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yokel
noun
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