Hobbledehoy
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A hobbledehoy (from an old Scots word) is an awkward rustic adolescent boy or teenager. A hobbledehoy is naïve, gawky, and shy around women. He is neither a boy nor a man, and so is also called a halfling. The root word hob is also used to describe the little men of fairy tales, like hobs, hobgoblins, and hobyahs.
The word hobbledehoy is used by Richard Hannay in John Buchan's The Three Hostages to refer to local rustics. Anthony Blanche in Brideshead Revisited mocks some Oxford undergraduates, whom he accuses of acting out their repressed homosexual fantasies by dunking him in the college fountain, as "hobbledehoys" among other things. The Hobbit (in a book by Tolkien) is a 3 foot tall man, half the height of a 6 foot man, and therefore a halfling. In Disney's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Ichabod Crane, a tall gawky school master, is described as a hobbledehoy in a song, referring to his awkwardness.
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