Definition of "yokel"

“ […] my opinion at once is […] that this [robbery] wasn’t done by a yokel―eh, Duff?”“Certainly not,” replied Duff.“And, translating the word yokel, for the benefit of the ladies, I apprehend your meaning to be that this attempt was not made by a countryman?” said Mr. Losberne with a smile.

1838, Boz [pseudonym; Charles Dickens], “Involves a Critical Position”, in Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy’s Progress. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], page 181

[…] and yokels looking up at the tinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers, while the light-fingered folk are operating upon their pockets behind.

1848 June 28, William Makepeace Thackeray, “Before the Curtain”, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], page vii

He eyed the story-teller with unspeakable wonder. His mouth was agape in yokel fashion.

1895, Stephen Crane, chapter 8, in The Red Badge of Courage‎, New York: Appleton, page 88

I went to New York and bought myself a secondhand stretch limousine twenty-eight feet long, calculated to reduce the most blasé country-club sophisticates to bug-eyed yokels.

1985, Peter De Vries, chapter 6, in The Prick of Noon‎, Penguin, page 119

‘You may think that because you live in Brahmpur you have seen the world―or more of the world than we poor yokels see. But some of us yokels have also seen the world―and not just the world of Brahmpur, but of Bombay. […] ’

1993, Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy, London: Phoenix, 1994, Chapter 8.6, p. 560