Other forms: yokels
A yokel is a country person, spoken of as simple and unpolished. Play the yokel.
It is always an insult and always said by somebody from a town. The accent it mocks is often the older form of the language rather than a corruption of it.
1nounyokelA country person, spoken of as simple and unpolished.
“The play treats every farmer as a yokel and ages badly for it.”
yokel is a person.
The word appears about 1812 and is of uncertain origin, perhaps from a dialect name.
German
Jokel
English, today
yokel
Built from
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.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA