These words refer unflatteringly to rural, provincial, uncultured or unsophisticated people. Yokel and hayseed are contemptuous informal terms for a person from a rural or farming background who is uncultured or ignorant. Hayseed is not common but when used is the more vivid and the more withering in its scorn: stuck off-season in a holiday resort filled with country yokels ; a hayseed who didn’t seem able to understand the simplest request for directions. Also, yokel can refer to any non-cosmopolitan audience: taking a programme of hackneyed piano pieces on tour, since they were sure to please the local yokels . Both terms seem old-fashioned today; they have the ring of a bygone era, probably because of the greatly increasing sophistication of rural people.

Hick , too, can apply to someone in a provincial setting, including those from towns or even cities considered to be removed from the centre of things: attacking him for sneering at so-called hicks in Armidale and Albury who wanted to build their own cultural centres rather than depending on touring companies from Sydney or Melbourne. Where yokel and hayseed usually place the provincial person in his home town, hick can apply to someone who appears to be newly arrived in a cosmopolitan setting and is still unfamiliar with its ways: hicks who come to King’s Cross to look at the hippies.

Country bumpkin , another old-fashioned abusive term for a person from a rural area, was originally slang for one who could be easily gulled, duped or conned: country bumpkins who fell for the sideshow barker’s promise of fantastic delights inside the tent. Rustic is the most formal of these words ?and the least uncomplimentary as well. It suggests a colourful, possibly even likeable country eccentric who is set in his ways or appears to be quaint in his tastes: sketching the old rustic who sat fishing on the jetty. While all these words, by implication, indicate men, hick and possibly rustic may refer to both men and women when pluralized: the dumb hicks in that town; a quaint English village peopled by genuine rustics .