Other forms: hitchhiking, hitchhiked, hitchhikes
To hitchhike is to travel free by standing at the road with your thumb out. Hitchhike across the country, hitchhiking is illegal there, a hitchhiker.
It was ordinary in Britain into the 1970s and is now rare, which has more to do with cheaper transport and greater wariness than with any change in the law — it is legal in Britain except on motorways. The raised thumb is not universal: several countries use a flat hand instead. Note hitchhiker; and that the word joins hitch, meaning to get a free ride, to hike.
1verbhitchhikeTo travel free by asking passing drivers for a lift.
“When they were students, they hitchhiked across France with just a tent.”
hitchhike is a way of travelling.
Hitch plus hike, coined in American English in the 1920s. Hitch meant to fasten or to catch a ride, and hike meant to walk, so the word covers both halves of the journey.
From hitch + hike.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA