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''clodhopper'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260915190735-00-⌔

clodhopper - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

clodhopper (plural clodhoppers)

  • (footwear)
    • A strong shoe for heavy-duty use; a boot.
      • ✤ …who had got on his “hill shoes,” as he calls a pair of clodhoppers as thick as a ploughman’s, and stuck round with nails.1
    • (US) Any shoe construed (within a particular context) as ungainly.
      • ✤ We had to walk slow because of his wooden clod-hoppers, and that was the way I wanted it now2
    • (military slang) United States Navy ankle length work shoes, distinct from dress shoes or combat boots.
      • ✤ Smiling Jim Mead of New York tries on his GI clodhopper boots. He decided to return them “because we couldn’t make any altitude with those aboard.”3
      • ✤ […] now a book is no greater rarity than bacon and greens in Virginia; and the clodhopper of this country returns from his daily labours to a book […]4
      • ✤ ‘Nephew Jack,’ he cried, looking at me when I was thinking what to say, and finding only emptiness, ‘you are a heavy lout, sir; a bumpkin, a clodhopper; and I shall leave you nothing, unless it be my boots to grease.’5
    • (by extension) To refer to generally big feet or the foot of a clumsy person.67
  • (UK) A clumsy or foolish person.
    • ✤ Synonym: oaf
    • ✤ All guess-work exploits shrivel up a good yard, or sometimes two, when brought to the measure, and the champion of the county dwindles into a clumsy clod-hopper.8
  • (historical, derogatory) A peasant or yokel (countryperson).
    • ✤ Near-synonyms: bumpkin, hick
    • (obsolete) A farmer or plowman.
  • Wheatear: any of various passerine birds.
    • ✤ …and as the birds then begin to resort to the downs and open commons, the “fallow-chat,” “wheat-ear,” and “clodhopper,” are not unappropriate names.9

Etymology

Compound of clod +‎ hopper (agentive form of the verb hop). Perhaps affected by analogy with grasshopper.

The term originated in the 17th century as a derogatory name for a farm laborer —someone who “hopped” (stomped) over “clods” of earth; attested in the sense of “peasant” since the seventeenth century; the extended sense of “boot” or “shoe” dates from the nineteenth century.

While originating in Britain, the term survives most strongly in Southern/Appalachian speech.10

Pronunciation

  • (General American) IPA: /ˈklɑdˌhɑpɚ/
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈklɒdˌhɒpə/
  • Audio (US): 🔊

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Printed 2026-09-15.

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Footnotes

  1. 1830, Margaret Hundy, “First Epistle from Mrs. Margaret Hundy”, in The Lady’s Magazine: ↩

  2. 1959, Claude F. Koch, A Matter of Family: ↩

  3. 1943 August 16, “Senators go global: Five will fly to all fronts”, in LIFE Magazine: ↩

  4. 1719, René Le Bossu, translated by Pierre François le Courayer and Peter Anthony Motteux, Monsieur Bossu’s Treatise of the Epick Poem, J. Knapton and H. Clements, →OCLC, page 332: ↩

  5. 1869, Richard Doddridge Blackmore, “ch. 14”, in Lorna Doone: ↩

  6. William Henry Baker. A dictionary of men’s wear. “clodhopper”. ↩

  7. “clodhopper”. Green’s Dictionary of Slang. ↩

  8. 1826 August, P.H. Clias, “Gymnastics”, in Blackwood’s Magazine, volume XX, number CXV: ↩

  9. 1834, Robert Mudie, The Feathered Tribes of the British Islands, volume 1: ↩

  10. Hillbilly Slang. “Clodhoppers”. ↩