Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also hic) a potential victim, a gullible simpleton.

1663		Wandring whores complaint 4: I met with a Country Hick, and steping before him, I dropt a Jacobus, and taking it up, he cry’d half.
1671		‘L.B.’ New Academy of Complements 204: The sixth is a Foyl-cloy that not one Hick spares.
a.1674		‘Of the Budge’ Head Canting Academy (1674) 12: But when that we come out again, / And the merry Hick we meet, / We file his cole, / As he pikes along the street.
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Hick, any Person of whom any Prey can be made or Booty taken from.
1728		Defoe Street Robberies Considered 32: Hic, Booby.
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict.
1754		Scoundrel’s Dict. n.p.: The fourteenth, a gamester, if he sees the hick sweet He presently drops down a cog in the street [F&H].
1909		H. Green Mr. Jackson 107: Why the pore hicks who give up oughter be tickled to deat’ fut the chanct of losin’ their coin to him.
1919		H.C. Witwer Smile A Minute 28: We’ll get the big hick, too!
1952		J. Jones From Here to Eternity (1998) 255: I’m a hick [...] Plumb green.
1965		A. James America’s Homosexual Underground 23: What a hick I was! I never suspected him of being a fag.
1975		J. Carr Bad (1995) 86: ‘Well, here’s the facts,’ I said, looking the hick in the eye.

2. any inhabitant of the countryside, a peasant, a farmer.

[1565		T. Harding in Jewel Defence of the Apologie (1611) 529: Be it that Hicke, Hob, and Hans, of your Sects haue impudentlie accused him [OED]].
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Hick c. [...] a silly Country Fellow.
c.1707		‘The Long Vacation’ in Farmer Merry Songs and Ballads (1897) IV 144: One above the rest, / So wondrous Trim; / You would swear she was a Hick, / And no common Brim.
1719		in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy IV 323: You would swear she was a Hick, / And no common Brim.
1725		New Canting Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
1754		Scoundrel’s Dict. 30: The Eighth is a Bulk that can bulk any hick, / If the Master be napp’d, then the Bulk he is sick.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Hick, a country hick, an ignorant clown (cant).
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1848		Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open 110: Hick Jop, a bumpkin, a fool. Hick Sam, a country fellow, a fool.
1852		G.C. Mundy Our Antipodes II 176: Johnny Hicky (as the soldiers called him).
1869		‘Thief-Catcher’s Prophecy’ in W.H. Logan Pedlar’s Pack of Ballads 143: [as cit. 1754].
1902		Ade Girl Proposition 91: It was a loud Hick.
1908		H. Green Maison De Shine 243: He’s a hick who’s been in vaudeville [...] You can see the hay on him yet, but he sure can dance.
1917		R. Lardner ‘Three Kings and a Pair’ in Gullible’s Travels 45: It’s high time she was gettin’ married, and I don’t want her marryin’ none o’ them Hoosier hicks.
1921		N. Putnam West Broadway 19: No New Yorker is supposed to rubber at the upper part [of a building]. Only the hicks do that.
1922		S. Lewis Babbitt (1974) 91: If the hicks back home could see me in this rig, they’d have a fit!
1933		Florence Desmond ‘Cigarettes, Cigars’ 🎵 I was one of those hicks, / That came here from the sticks.
1940		W.R. Burnett High Sierra in Four Novels (1984) 291: You see that hick over there with the big shoulders and the ugly face?
1959		S. Bellow Henderson The Rain King 316: The Canadian hicks were rejoicing underneath with red faces.
1969		P. Boyle All Looks Yellow to the Jaundiced Eye 111: It was dowdy [...] making of her a hick, a real dyed-in-the-wool country hick.
1977		E. Bunker Animal Factory 98: These fuckers are like hicks in a small town, he thought.
1986		C. Bowles G’DAY 42: If you live in a rural area you are a cockie or a bushie or a hick.
1988		D. Woodrell Muscle for the Wing 12: The hicks will know that some new rough element has dropped in on their town.
1999		Guardian G2 18 June 5: She feels like a hick who has come up to the big city.
2003		P. Cornwell Blow Fly (2004) 2: She is still Nick the Hick from Zachery, Louisiana.
2008		Simon & Burns ‘Stay Frosty’ Generation Kill ep. 6 [TV script] You fuckin’ messed up hick, you can’t even eat ravioli.
2011		F. Bill ‘Hill Clan Cross’ in Crimes in Southern Indiana [ebook] [S]ounding like a southern Indiana hick.
2022		I. Fitzgerald Dirtbag, Massachusetts 71: [F]reaked out about what the hell kind of scary hick their kid had brought on vacation.

3. anyone parochial and limited, irrespective of origin.

1915		T.A. Dorgan Indoor Sports 25 Jan. [synd. cartoon] Indoor Sports. Listening to a henpecked hick stall his way out of a poker game with the boys.
1929		J. Lait Broadway Melody 3: A big-town hick, wise in his generation, who thinks the world is bounded by the rivers that surround Manhattan.
2014		Pando Qly Spring 53/1: The North Carolina contingent made us Yankees look like hicks.

4. (US) a Puerto Rican.

1967

Wentworth & Flexner DAS (Supplement).

5. (US campus) one who lacks social and/or academic abilities.

1967–8

Baker et al. CUSS.