hobbledehoy
noun & adjective

- an awkward, bad-mannered adolescent boy

Dictionary dot com

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WORD ORIGIN

“Hobbledehoy”, a variant of hoberdyboy (among other spellings), is of unclear origin, and theories abound.

The first part of hobbledehoy may stem from hob or hoberd, which are forms of Robert. The change from Robert to hob or hoberd is typical of rhyming in English name formation; just as Robert has the nickname Bob and is the source of surnames such as Dobbs and Hopkins, William has the nickname Bill and is the source of the surname Gilliam.

Similar to the term "hobgoblin", the hob element in hobbledehoy is a dialectal English term for “elf” that may be a variant of Robin (a diminutive of Robert), as in 'Robin Goodfellow', a folkloric fairy also known as 'Puck'.

Hobbledehoy was first recorded in English in a 1540 translation of Gulielmus Gnaphaeus's 'The Comedye of Acolastus', in which it is used in an attributive sense, referring to young men's "Hobledehoye tyme, the yeres that one is neyther a man nor a boye, at which yeres our voyce changeth.”

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TEENAGE TRANSFORMATION

The teenage years are a glorious, awkward, and often hilarious mess. Boys transform from gangly hobbledehoys, navigating the social jungle with all the grace of a newborn giraffe, to bright young men.

Meanwhile, girls blossom from energetic tomboys into bright young women, their previous tomfoolery now tempered with a newfound awareness of the world's (often unspoken) rules.

Though separated by gender, both hobbledehoys and tomboys share a special kind of awkward charm. Their stumbling is a little like the delightful cacophony of an orchestra before the conductor arrives.

So, the next time you encounter a teenager with mismatched socks and a questionable fashion sense, remember, they are not simply awkward — they’re on a path of self-discovery that we ourselves once trod.

Paul Smith

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SYNONYMS

all thumbs, amateurish, artless, awkward, bashful, blundering, boorish, bumbling, clumsy, cumbersome, disconcerting, embarrassing, gawky, gauche, graceless, green, ham-fisted, HOBBLEDEHOY, ill at ease, ill-at-ease, ill-coordinated, inept, inexperienced, inelegant, maladroit, maladjusted, naive, self-conscious, shy, socially inept, stiff, stilted, tentative, timid, uncomfortable, uncoordinated, uneasy, ungainly, unnatural, wooden

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SMUGGLE OWAD into an English conversation, say something like:

“It’s an interesting coincidence that the clumsiness of HOBBLEDEHOY is concurrent with the appearance of wisdom teeth!”

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