ˈclod-hopper
[f. clod n. + hop v.; perh. with humorous allusion to grass-hopper.]
1. One who walks over ploughed land; a ploughman or agricultural labourer; a country lout; hence, a clumsy awkward boor, a clown.
| c 1690 B. E. Dict. Cant. Crew, Clod-hopper, a Ploughman. 1721 S. Centlivre Artifice iii. i, Did you ever see a dog brought on a plate, clodhopper? Did you? 1824 Miss Mitford Village Ser. i. (1863) 136 He turned his clowns into gentlemen, and their brother clod-hoppers laughed at them, and they were ashamed. |
2. pl. A ploughman's heavy shoes.
| 1836 E. Howard R. Reefer lxii, Purser's shoes..a hybrid breed, between a pair of cast-off slippers and the ploughman's clodhoppers. |
3. A bird; the Wheat-ear. Cf. clotbird.
| 1834 Mudie Brit. Birds (1841) I. 267 The fallow-chat, wheat-ear, and clod-hopper are not inappropriate names. 1885 Swainson Prov.-n. Brit. Birds 10 (E.D.S.). |
Hence (nonce-wds.) clodˈhoppering, clodˈhopperish, clodˈhoppership.
| 1832 J. Wilson in Blackw. Mag. XXXI. 1002 Our own dislike to their clodhopperships. 1880 Mrs. Whitney Odd or Even 37 The traditional clodhoppering which real New England farm-life has long been rising away from. |