Yokel

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Yokels, also called bumpkins, are unsophisticated country people. In England yokels are traditionally depicted as wearing the old West Country farmhand's dress of straw hat and white smock, chewing a piece of straw and carrying a pitchfork or rake. The Wurzels cheerfully play on this stereotype in their Scrumpy and Western music. Yokels can also come from other parts of Britain such as Yorkshire or Norfolk. English yokels speak a country dialect from some part of England. [link] Variations can involve the straw hat with baggy trousers or a large untidy weatherproof hat not of straw.

Yokels are also depicted as talking about bucolic topics like cows, sheep, fields, crops and buxom wenches to the exclusion of all else.

The word may derive either from a comic mispronunciation of the word 'local', from a dialect word 'yokel' meaning 'woodpecker' or from the Somerset word 'yogel' meaning 'owl', owls being traditionally seen as stupid in Somerset.

In fiction, such yokels may be depicted as gullible and easily conned. Conversely, they may be viewed as straightforward and simplistic, and therefore seeing through sophisticated pretenses.

The development of television brought many previously isolated communities into mainstream British culture in the 1950s and 1960s. The Internet continues this integration, further eroding the town/country divide. In the 21st century British country folk are less frequently seen as yokels.

In the United States yokel has a similar meaning to Hillbilly or country bumpkin.

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Yokel

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