# yokel

> English word · Noun · IPA /ˈjəʊ.kəl/

## Definitions
1. A person from or living in the countryside, viewed as being unsophisticated or naive.

## Etymology
First use appears c. 1812, possibly from dialectal German Jokel, diminutive of Jakob, cf. Yankee (“little John”) and jacquerie (“a peasant uprising”). Alternatively, from dialectal English yokel, yuckle (“a European green woodpecker”), itself probably a variant of hickwall.

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/word/yokel