Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A gawky adolescent boy.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A stripling; a youth in the half-formed age preceding manhood; a raw, awkward youth.
- n. A large unmanageable top.
Wiktionary
- n. An awkward adolescent boy.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. colloq. A youth between boy and man; an awkward, gawky young fellow .
WordNet 3.0
- n. an awkward bad-mannered adolescent boy
Etymologies
- From Scots. Compare English dialect hobbledygee with a limping movement; also French hobereau, a country squire, English hobby, and Old French hoi today; perhaps the original sense was "an upstart of today". (Wiktionary)
- Origin unknown. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“When Grandpa wasnt a grandpa and was just instead a small-fry, hobbledehoy boy blowing out thirteen dripping candles on a lopsided cake, his savvy hit him hard and suddenjust like it did to fish that day of the backyard birthday party and the hurricaneand the entire state of Idaho got made.”
““A black-haired, red-cheeked, long-legged hobbledehoy of 26, though not looking or seeming near that age,” he wrote.12”
“Nights of Villjamur is an occasionally hobbledehoy, sometimes rich and atmospheric Fenrir-Devouring-The-Sun Dying Earth fantasy.”
“Geiton the hero, a handsome, curly-pated hobbledehoy of seventeen, with his câlinerie and wheedling tongue, is courted like one of the sequor sexus: his lovers are inordinately jealous of him and his desertion leaves deep scars upon the heart.”
“‘This is a boy, or a youth, or a lad, or a young man, or a hobbledehoy, or whatever you like to call him, of eighteen or nineteen, or thereabouts,’ said Ralph.”
“I retain the keenest sympathy and something inexplicably near to envy for my own departed youth, but I should find it difficult to maintain my case against any one who would condemn me altogether as having been a very silly, posturing, emotional hobbledehoy indeed and quite like my faded photograph.”
“The bandages and false hair flew across the passage into the bar, making a hobbledehoy jump to avoid them.”
“And he had a younger sister who loved him dearly, who had no idea that he was a hobbledehoy, being somewhat of a hobbledehoy herself.”
“But the hobbledehoy, though he blushes when women address him, and is uneasy even when he is near them, though he is not master of his limbs in a ball-room, and is hardly master of his tongue at any time, is the most eloquent of beings, and especially eloquent among beautiful women.”
“When I compare the hobbledehoy of one or two and twenty to some finished Apollo of the same age, I regard the former as unripe fruit, and the latter as fruit that is ripe.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘hobbledehoy’.
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phrontistery - h
from phrontistery.info
hysteresis, hyrax, hyoid, hymnody, hymnal, hylicism, hydric, hyalopterous, hyaloid, hyalography, hyaline, hyacinthine and 568 more...
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The weird, the wonderful and the plai...
Loved for their ingenuity, an exact description, or simply for the pure joy of it.
acidulous, aprosdoketon, higgledy-piggledy, lexicographical, ninja, audacious, somnabulist, shivaree, amorphous, quidnunc, glib, melancholy and 353 more...
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Nincompoopery
Words that clatter and tumble
nincompoop, pettyfoggery, gaberlunzie, cattywampus, weisenheimer, katzenjammer, hecklephone, loblolly, carriwitchet, flibbertyjibbet, hornswoggle, thimblerigger and 161 more...
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Not 250 Spelling Words Again
Yet more spelling words for intermediate to advanced spellers.
kyoodle, heimin, feis, menarche, cordwainer, gherao, zythum, accidie, anastomosis, boustrophedon, oleum, penicillin and 238 more...
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for school!
squally, monetization, honorificabilitud..., hornswoggle, collywobbles, slangwhanger, filibuster, cliona, beknow, gallimaufry, sylvan, aide-de-camp and 31 more...
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Awkward-Sounding Words
smock, awkward, specificity, hobbledehoy, kitthoge, stroppy, loobily, ambisinistrous, botcherly, tintinnabulation, megalophonous, bosthoon and 7 more...
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Hobs
hob, hobby, hobbyhorse, hobnob, hobanob, hob and nob, Hob Collingwood, hobble, Calvin and Hobbes, hobbledygee, Hobby-lanthorn, hobbit and 41 more...
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Fun Words
Words that are fun to say....
gobbledygook, jings, crivens, hullabaloo, wheech, brouhaha, pizzazz, harum-scarum, namby-pamby, pussyfoot, frippery, pitter-patter and 333 more...
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Chennessy's Words
philistine, messianic, dyad, cult, bourgeois, blot, ploy, polyglot, lingua franca, cumbersome, lumber, petit-bourgeois and 446 more...
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Wrongheads
Insults that make me laugh. Some of these are re-contextualized because they sound like insults to me.
wretched, dasdardly, sniveling, dingbat, rankle, vapid, ninny, nincompoop, dolt, imbecile, fucktard, scoundrel and 173 more...
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~~Olde-Fashioned Insults~~
ragamuffin, muttonchops, tatterdemalion, nincompoop, whippersnapper, bootlicker, backscratcher, loggerhead, weisenheimer, hornswoggler, thimblerigger, quacksalver and 111 more...
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To Learn
enervate, redolent, distaff, approbation, arrogate, bonhomie, palliate, calumny, panoply, contumacious, edify, dyspeptic and 188 more...
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Words I'd Like to Use Someday
thundersnow, phantasmagoria, mercurial, chimerical, taciturn, paraclete, lapis lazuli, flay, guttersnipe, wonky, misanthrope, kestrel and 583 more...
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Britishness
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xyzprincess's Words
crabwise, virtu, peripatetic, idyll, trencherman, equivocate, flummery, hoi polloi, pixilated, albatross, wangle, bodacious and 170 more...
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Necessary?
"Words are very..."
The above was the original description for this list. Unfortunately, it doesn't convey much about the list contents.
I'm leaving you to draw your own conclusions abo...supererogation, fruitcake, unbeknownst, melifluous, bane, cavy, unnecessary, lyrical, question, undertow, weapon, arduous and 200 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for hobbledehoy.

yarb He, Mark, could not stand hobbledehoys - particularly the hobbledehoys of that age who appeared to be opinionative and emotional beyond the normal in hobbledehoys.
- Ford Madox Ford, The Last Post Mar 11, 2008