country bumpkin
5
8.2
- noun
- /ˈkʌntri ˈbʌmpkɪn/
- Offensive
:
paleto
- She felt like a country bumpkin when she arrived in the city and saw all the tall buildings.
- a bunch of country bumpkins
- just a country bumpkin
- a little country bumpkin
Don't be like a country bumpkin who's totally uncultured.
- Don't be like a country bumpkin who's totally uncultured.
- We found it, these country bumpkins, they don't even lock their doors.
Examples
-
You stammer and get red in the face like a country bumpkin when he even looks at you. "Mayhap that's because I am a country bumpkin." "You?" she laughed.
Fiction book (1994) -
You're not the illiterate country bumpkin you would have people believe.
-
And she said he was a bit of a country bumpkin !
-
Oh, it was, until we changed it to the most country bumpkin name we could come up with.
-
I felt like a country bumpkin beside her.
Fiction book (1993) -
We found it, these country bumpkins, they don't even lock their doors.
-
How the city caters to country bumpkins.
Blog text (17) -
Just another country bumpkin.
Blog text (5) -
Don't be like a country bumpkin who's totally uncultured.
-
Our American Cousin is a farce in three acts about Asa Trenchard, an American country bumpkin who comes to England to claim an aristocratic inheritance.
Synonyms
32
9.9
A person from the countryside who is not used to city life
16
8.9
A person from the countryside who seems not used to city life
9
9.8
A person from the countryside who seems not used to city life
1
6.3
A person from the countryside who seems simple and not used to city life
Antonyms
- Informal
6
6.7
A person from a city who seems well dressed and not used to country life
How Sophisticated
5
7.7
- Offensive
5
8.2
- Offensive
2
7.5
- Offensive
17
9.6
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'country' (rural) modifies 'bumpkin' (a socially awkward rural person), so the overall sense of an unsophisticated person from the countryside is immediately derivable from the parts. This follows a common modifier + noun pattern found cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will understand it.
Etymology
Country bumpkin paints a picture of someone from the countryside who seems a bit naive. One popular idea says the word bumpkin was a playful name for a small, clumsy person and the ending -kin meant 'little', so the image of a 'little country person' became a way to say someone is 'not sophisticated'.