(HIL.bil.ee.ing)
pp.
Emphasizing one's rural or humble upbringing.
—hillbilly v.
Example Citation:
They said that in Texas there's an expression. It is called hillbillying. And when Bush hillbillies, that means he is charming you and he's being very authentic and he's doing Texas and it woos people.
And Kerry doesn't know how to hillbilly. And it is not a Texas thing, by the way. John F. Kennedy used to hillbilly us. And that meant that he flirted with us. He had a twinkle. Bill Clinton hillbillied us. And Kerry has got to learn how to do that. He has got to dial back and show some relaxed affability.
— Lesley Stahl, "Hardball," MSNBC, April 30, 2004
Earliest Citation:
Like Ken Lay, [Rebecca] Mark came from a small town in Missouri, one of four children in a farm family with deep fundamentalist beliefs. Her conversational style has been polished in Texas, and she is a master of "hillbillying," the trick of playing up one's humble origins.
— Marie Brenner, "The Enron Wars," Vanity Fair, April 2002
Related Words:
Category:
New words. 2013.