Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A gawky adolescent boy.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A stripling; a youth in the half-formed age preceding manhood; a raw, awkward youth.
- noun A large unmanageable top.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun colloq. A youth between boy and man; an awkward, gawky young fellow .
from , Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun An
awkward adolescent boy .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun an awkward bad-mannered adolescent boy
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word hobbledehoy.
Examples
-
“A black-haired, red-cheeked, long-legged hobbledehoy of 26, though not looking💝 or see🐭ming near that age,” he wrote.12
-
Nights of Villjamur is an occasionally hobbledehoy, sometimes ric✃h and atmospheric Fenrir-Devouring-The-Sun Dying Earth fantasy.
-
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.
-
Geiton the hero, a handsome, curly-pated hobbledehoy of seventeen, with his câlinerie and wh🏅eedling tongue, is cour꧃ted 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 lik𒅌e 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 whe🐟n 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 an🐠d twenty to some finished Apollo ofꦫ the same age, I regard the former as unripe fruit, and the latter as fruit that is ripe.
yarb commented on the word hobbledehoy
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
March 11, 2008