hayseed

plural hayseeds

1. countableuncountableSeeds from grass that has become hay.

   I lay and lay, and was doctored and doctored,; until at last I drove the physicians from me, and called in an apothecary from Nicolai who had cured an old woman of a malady similar to my own—cured her merely with a little hayseed.

   1867, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, chapter IX, in The Gambler, translated by C. J. Hogarth^(https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Gambler_(1867)/IX)

2. countableuncountableCruft from bits of hay that sticks to clothing, etc.
3. countableA rustic person; a yokel or bumpkin.

   Synonyms: bogger, bogtrotter, boor, bucolic, bydlo, culchie, carl, churl

comparative more hayseed · superlative most hayseed

1. Characteristic of or befitting a hayseed (person); rustic, uncultivated, backwater.

   And when he got his first demand, he shook his head and put a pained expression on his face, and in his most hayseed manner allowed as how things were kind of different now.

   1988, Richard Sapir, Quest

   1 more example

   The Corporation of Western Reserve University, with entire unanimity and ombliferous enthusiasm, made you to-day an LL. D. It is no small shakes of a hayseed College, I would have you know.

   1892, John Hay, Letters of John Hay and Extracts From Diary, volume II, published 1969, page 241