roustabout
Etymology
From roust + about.
roustabout means an unskilled laborer, especially at an oilfield, at a circus or on a ship. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 86 out of 100.
Why this word is great
ROUSTABOUT — [Noun] An unskilled or casual laborer, especially one performing heavy or transient work on ships, docks, in circuses, or in oilfields. From the verb 'roust' (an alteration of 'rouse', meaning to stir up or drive out) + 'about', suggesting one who is driven about or moves around for work. Unlike a 'longshoreman'—a skilled, often unionized pillar of the docks—or a 'carny'—an initiate into the gaudy lore of the midway—the roustabout is defined by his expendable utility and rootlessness. He is the rope-burned hand heaving cargo under a stevedore's whistle, the silhouette hammering tent stakes into predawn mud, and the figure clambering over the iron skeleton of a drilling rig as the wind whips the plain—the temporary man who builds and dismantles the stages upon which others perform their more permanent lives.
noun
- An unskilled laborer, especially at an oilfield, at a circus or on a ship.“The U. is my own Alma Mater, and I am proud to be known as an alumni, but there are certain instructors there who seem to think we ought to turn the conduct of the nation over to hoboes and roustabouts.”
verb
- To work as a roustabout.“When Jack is old and weatherbeat, / Too old to roustabout, / In some rum-shop they’ll let him stop, / At eight bells he’s turned out.”