the.com/hayseed
City slicker's favorite insult for anyone who prefers horizons over hustle.
means A naive, unsophisticated person from the countryside — or the stereotype a city dweller pins on one.
from Literally the seed-husks and bits of hay that clung to the clothes and hair of farmhands — a dead giveaway, to 19th-century American city eyes, that someone had just walked off a farm. The visible chaff became a stand-in for the person, and by the late 1800s 'hayseed' had sprouted from literal debris into a put-down for rural simplicity itself.
- origin
- literally seeds of hay stuck in hair
- first use
- 1800s American slang for rural folk
- irony
- often used by people who have never farmed
- cousin term
- related to rube, bumpkin, and yokel