Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A laborer employed for temporary or unskilled jobs, as in an oil field.
- noun A circus laborer.
- noun A deck or wharf laborer, especially on the Mississippi River.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun See
rouse-about . - noun A common wharf-laborer or deck-hand, originally one on the Mississippi or other western river.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun Western U.S. A laborer, especially a deck hand, on a river steamboat, who moves the cargo, loads and unloads wood, and the like; in an opprobrious sense, a shiftless vagrant who lives by chance jobs.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun an
unskilled laborer , especially at anoilfield , at acircus or on aship
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a member of a ship's crew who performs manual labor
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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ROMANS: Look at the worst jobs, roustabout, which is for a worst job, it has the best name.
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ROMANS: Look at the worst jobs, roustabout, which is for a worst job, it has the best name.
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NEW YORK -- Being an actuary, calculating statistics to determine probability and risk, is the best job to have in 2010, while working on an oil rig as a roustabout is the worst, according to a study released on Tuesday.
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A roustabout is a dangerous job that typically pays about US$31,000 a year, with high unemployment and a negative outlook for growth, the study said.
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But what I love the most: also included at the bottom of the list are the job titles "roustabout" and "stevedore," which I admit I had to Google.
Boing Boing 2010
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Redford served as a "roustabout," an unskilled laborer who did little jobs around the rigs, until he was discovered sleeping in an oil tank he'd been assigned to clean.
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In the same town there lived a Negro, named Henry Smith, a well-known character, a kind of roustabout, who was generally considered a harmless, weak-minded fellow, not capable of doing any important work, but sufficiently able to do chores and odd jobs around the houses of the white people who cared to employ him.
The Red Record Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States Ida B. Wells-Barnett 1896
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Though, as always with a Decemberists album, you may want to have a lyric sheet and thesaurus handy just in case you get a word like "roustabout" thrown at you.
FIUSM.com 2009
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By the way, Knight wants a camp hand, a kind of roustabout, who can cook -- a handy man, you know. "
The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land Ralph Connor 1898
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Of course, it must be remembered that along with such frivolous occupations I was trying to get work as wop, lumper, and roustabout.
Chapter 25 2010
qms commented on the word roustabout
A modest ambition, without a doubt,
But realized now, so shout it out,
For poor simple Fergus
Has run to the circus
To go on the road as a roustabout!
February 24, 2016