Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Hillbilly |
HillbillyAdjective1. (of music) characteristic of rural life. Noun1. A disparaging term for an unsophisticated person. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
The term "hillbilly" originated as a pejorative term for people who lived in isolation in mountainous regions of North America such as the Appalachian mountains and Ozarks. A less demeaning term would be "hill folk". The use of this definition was probably most valid between the western expansion and the 1940s. The advent of the interstate highway system and television brought these communities into mainstream United States culture in the 1950s and 1960s, but many communities with relatively traditional lifestyles remain throughout the region.Historically, there were conflicts between the hillbillies and the planters who lived in the plains. During the American Civil War, the hill folk were almost uniformly pro-Union in that they generally did not own slaves and resented the political dominance of planters who did. This resentment lead to the creation of the state of West Virginia. This has also led to counties in hillbilly areas with pro-Union names such as Lincoln County or Union County.
Country and Western music was called hillbilly music, even by its fans, until the late 1950s. Now both terms have been supplanted by country music.
The hillbilly lifestyle was gently parodied in the 1960s American sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies were supposed to have come from near the Ozarks.
In modern terms a hillbilly is an individual characterized by being generally unrefined.
see also white trash
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Hillbilly."
Synonyms: HillbillySynonyms: country(a) (adj), folk(a) (adj), western(a) (adj), bushwhacker (n). (additional references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | What is that? A hillbilly with a tuxedo (Inspector Gadget; writing credit: Andy Heyward; Jean Chalopin) In high school I was voted most likely to be a mental patient, hillbilly or chimpanzee (The Simpsons; writing credit: Artur Brauner; Paul Hengge) | |
Lyrics | You got a heartbroke hillbilly (Don't Rock The Jukebox; performing artist: Alan Jackson) Called me hillbilly (A Country Boy Can Survive (Y2K Verison); performing artist: Chad Brock) Might be the answer to this hillbilly fear (American Dream; performing artist: The Dirt Band) | |
Movie/TV Titles | The Legend of Hillbilly John (1973) Hillbilly Hare (1950) Silly Hillbilly (1949) Hillbilly Blitzkrieg (1942) The Hillbilly Billie (1915) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Theater & Movies | |
Music |
|
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Author | Quotation |
Bill Hicks | I'll tell you, too, that's starting to depress me about UFO's, about the fact that they cross galaxies, or wherever they come from to visit us, and always end up in places like Fife, Alabama. Maybe these are not super-intelligent beings, man. Maybe they're like hillbilly aliens. Some intergalactic Joad family or something. "Don't you all want to land in New York, or L.A.?" "Nah, we just had a long trip, we gonna kick back and whittle some." Oh, my God, they're idiots. "We're gonna enter our mothership in the tractor pull!" My God, we're being invaded by rednecks. My biggest fear. Last thing I want to see is a flying saucer up on blocks in front of some trailer, you know? Wouldn't that be depressing? Some bumper sticker on it - "They'll get my ray gun when they pry my cold, dead, eighteen-fingered hand off of it." |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | |
| Speaker | Phrase(s) |
Linda Thompson | Oh, he revolutionized music. You know, he was this young kid from abject poverty who grew up in Tupelo, Mississippi and Memphis, Tennessee, and you know, was an amalgamation of lots of different styles of music, from black gospel to, you know, hillbilly. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| "Hillbilly" is generally used as an adjective (general or positive) -- approximately 45.45% of the time. "Hillbilly" is used about 11 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Adjective (general or positive) | 45.45% | 5 | 157,705 |
| Adverb (general) | 36.36% | 4 | 175,879 |
| Noun (proper) | 18.18% | 2 | 245,945 |
| Total | 100.00% | 11 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expression using "hillbilly": hillbilly music. Additional references. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "hillbilly"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Albanian | i pagdhendur (artless, bearish, crass, Hick, loutish, lowlife, oafish, raffish, rank, rough, uncouth, unhewn). (various references) | |
Bulgarian | селяк от юга в сащ, народна музика от южните щати, планинец от юга в сащ. (various references) | |
Czech | horák, venkovský křupan, venkovan (country man, countryman, peasant, provincial, villager). (various references) | |
Farsi | ادم جنگلی(غالباازروی تحقیر). (various references) | |
German | hinterwäldler (backwoodsman, backwoodsmen, Hick). (various references) | |
Greek | χωρικόσ ωρεσίβιοσ. (various references) | |
Hungarian | hegylakó paraszt, hegylakó (mountaineer, mountainer), hegyi lakó (hill billy), mucsai (bushwhacker, hayseed, hick, jay, jerkwater). (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | �'ドロ� シ類 (CHI, close call, fuse, fuse cock, HE, hearing, heuristic, Hewlett, Hewlett Packard, Hilbert, hill, hill climb, hillbilly music, Himalaya, Houston, HP, HR, human, human assessment, human document, human ecology, human engineering, human interest, human interface, human relations, humanism, humanist, humanistic, humanity, humanization, humanlike, humanoid, hut, hydrozoan, hypochondria, interview, listening comprehension, near miss, public hearing). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | �'ル�"リーミュージック (hillbilly music). (various references) | |
Pig Latin | illbillyhay.(various references) | |
Russian | деревенский (bucolic, countrified, country, russet, rustic, village). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | prostački (chuffed, countrified, grossly, ignoble, low down, low-lived, uncouth, villainous, vulgar). (various references) | |
Swedish | lantis (Hick, peasant), bergsbo (highlander, mountaineer). (various references) | |
Turkish | dağ köylüsü, çiftçi (agricultural laborer, agricultural labourer, agriculturalist, agriculturist, bucolic, crofter, cultivator, farmer, husbandman, ploughman, plowman, yeoman). (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Sumerian | 3100 BCE-2500 BCE | hu-ru. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Misspellings | |
"Hillbilly" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: hillbiily, hillybilly. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "hillbilly" (pronounced hi"lbi'lē) |
| 4 | -b i' l ē | rockabilly. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "b-h-i-i-l-l-l-l-y" | |
-4 letters: billy, hilly. | |
-5 letters: bill, hili, hill, illy, lily, yill. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Usage: Modern 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Slideshow 6. Quotations: Familiar 7. Quotations: Spoken 8. Usage Frequency | 9. Expressions 10. Expressions: Internet 11. Translations: Modern 12. Translations: Ancient | 13. Derivations 14. Rhymes 15. Anagrams 16. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
