roustabout meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

roustabout

noun

Etymology From roust + about.

US 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.1922, Sinclair Lewis, chapter XIV, in Babbitt, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Company, →OCLC:
Then Sísiphos in torment I beheld / being roustabout to a tremendous boulder.1961, Homer, translated by Robert Fitzgerald, Odyssey, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Book Eleven, 668-9:

3 more examples

Brooklyn Tony, who had run away from home to be a circus roustabout, became a poster artist and eventually an Abstract Expressionist.1974, Saul Bellow, “Him with His Foot in His Mouth”, in Collected Stories, Penguin, published 2001, page 377:
She works in McGregor, North Dakota as a roustabout pusher. That means she and her crew help fix and maintain the drilling sites.2013 January 7, Celeste Headlee, NPR, archived from the original on 29 Oct 2015:
See also quotations under rouseabout.

verb

Etymology From roust + about.

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.1896, John Thomas (attributed), “Get Up, Jack! John, Sit Down!”, in John A[very] Lomax, Alan Lomax, editors, American Ballads and Folk Songs, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, published 1934, printed 1967, page 494:
I was due to bust through that cellar door here to-night, so I hurried the rest of the way up the river, roustabouting on a lower coast packet that made a landing for every fisherman that wanted a plug of tobacco.1907, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], ““Next to Reading Matter””, in Everybody’s Magazine, volume XVII, page 593, column 1:

1 more example

Thereafter, the youth gives many years to aimless wandering about the South and the Middle West. He roustabouts with a carnival […]1932 March 19, Vincent Wall, “Poor Whites”, in Saturday Review of Literature; reprinted in Scott MacDonald, Critical Essays on Erskine Caldwell, Boston, Mass.: G.K. Hall & Co., 1981, →ISBN, page 9:

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.