Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. 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]].
1573		G. Gascoigne A hundreth sundrie flowres bounde vp 359: Hick, Hobbe and Dick with cloutes vppon their knée.
1626		W. Vaughan The golden fleece 57: [L]icensing your women debauchedly to daunce the Cushion kissing Daunce, with Roysters and Ruffians, yea, and with Hob, Dick, and Hick.
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.

2. (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.
1996		E. Bunker Dog Eat Dog 150: The old mafioso was a hick about women and wives and shit like that. A snake in business, he was a squarejohn in family values.

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.