hitchhike

present singular third person hitchhikes · participle present hitchhiking · participle past hitchhiked · past hitchhiked · alternative hitch-hike

1. intransitiveTo try to get a ride in a passing vehicle while standing at the side of a road, generally by either sticking out one's finger or thumb or holding a sign with one's stated destination.

   Holly came from Miami, F-L-A / Hitchhiked her way across the U.S.A.

   1972, Lou Reed, “Walk on the Wild Side”, in Transformer

   2 more examples

   She made a great many photographs, and hitchhiked her way back to Lanchow again, and thence to Peking.

   1953, Pearl Buck, “Preface”, in Irene Vongehr Vincent, The Sacred Oasis: Caves of the Thousand Buddhas Tun Huang, University of Chicago Press, page x

   Tens of thousands of people had come to Washington the night before. They hitchhiked. They hopped on trains. They came in caravans of buses, through the night.

   2020, Jill Lepore, “The Things They Carried” (chapter 11), in If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future, Liveright Publishing Corporation, page 251

2. UStransitiveTo try to get (a ride) in this manner.

   Pamela hitchhiked a ride to New York.

   1 more example

   “I’m not goin’ to tell you what happened to me,” Asey said, “from the time I found her till I finally managed to hitchhike a ride to town. I want to forget that period of my life. […]”

   1945, Phoebe Atwood Taylor, Proof of the Pudding, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, page 42

3. broadlyintransitiveTo be carried along with something else.

   In cultural hitchhiking, a cultural trait spreads with a technologically advanced population.

   2 more examples

   In genetic hitchhiking, a gene is propagated because it occurs in conjunction with a favourable mutation.

   We are constantly being exposed to fungi, whether by picking up spores on our skin or eating food on which fungi are hitchhiking. Most of them won’t take up residence in our bodies.

   2022 September 29, Carl Zimmer, “A New Approach to Spotting Tumors: Look for Their Microbes”, in The New York Times

plural hitchhikes · alternative hitch-hike

1. A journey made by hitchhiking.
2. alternativeadvertisingAlternative form of hitchhiker (“advertisement at the end of a programme”).

   There are just too many diseases for each to have its own special organization, complete with radio hitchhikes, sponsored ads, expensive brochures, pledge cards, team captains and collection envelopes.

   1952, Frank Emerson Andrews, Corporation Giving, page 183