hobbledehoy HAH-bul-dee-hoy, noun:
An awkward, gawky young fellow.
For early on, girls become aware — as much from their fathers’ anguished bellows of “You’re not going out dressed like that, Miss” as from the buffoonish reactions of the spotty hobbledehoys at the end-of-term disco — of the power of clothes to seduce.
–Jane Shilling, “Soft-centred punk,” [1]Times (London), October 27, 2000
His memories, even only reveries, of incomparable women, made me feel like a hulking hobbledehoy.
–Edith Anderson, [2]Love in Exile
When Cole and Bryant each arrived in 1825 (Bryant from New England, Cole from old England via Ohio and Pennsylvania), New York still fit James Fenimore Cooper’s description as a “hobbledehoy metropolis, a rag fair sort of a place.”
–Tobin Harshaw, “Artists and Writers in a New World,” [3]New York Times, November 19, 2000
The origin of hobbledehoy is unknown, though it perhaps derives from hobble, from the awkward movements of a clumsy adolescent.
