| / English Dictionary |
LABOURER
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Someone who works with their hands; someone engaged in manual labor
Synonyms:
jack; laborer; labourer; manual laborer
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("labourer" is a kind of...):
working man; working person; workingman; workman (an employee who performs manual or industrial labor)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "labourer"):
yardman (a laborer hired to do outdoor work (such as mowing lawns))
wrecker (someone who demolishes or dismantles buildings as a job)
woodcutter (cuts down trees and chops wood as a job)
fireman; stoker (a laborer who tends fires (as on a coal-fired train or steamship))
dock-walloper; dock worker; docker; dockhand; dockworker; loader; longshoreman; lumper; stevedore (a laborer who loads and unloads vessels in a port)
steeplejack (someone who builds or maintains very tall structures)
stacker (a laborer who builds up a stack or pile)
sprayer (a worker who applies spray to a surface)
section hand (a laborer assigned to a section gang)
sawyer (one who is employed to saw wood)
rail-splitter; splitter (a laborer who splits logs to build split-rail fences)
porter (a person employed to carry luggage and supplies)
platelayer; tracklayer (a workman who lays and repairs railroad tracks)
mule driver; mule skinner; muleteer; skinner (a worker who drives mules)
miner; mineworker (laborer who works in a mine)
faller; feller; logger; lumberjack; lumberman (a person who fells trees)
gipsy; gypsy; itinerant (a laborer who moves from place to place as demanded by employment)
hod carrier; hodman (a laborer who carries supplies to masons or bricklayers)
hand; hired hand; hired man (a hired laborer on a farm or ranch)
hewer (a person who hews)
gravedigger (a person who earns a living by digging graves)
gandy dancer (a laborer in a railroad maintenance gang)
drudge; galley slave; navvy; peon (a laborer who is obliged to do menial work)
dishwasher (someone who washes dishes)
digger (a laborer who digs)
day laborer; day labourer (a laborer who works by the day; for daily wages)
cleaner (someone whose occupation is cleaning)
bracero (a Mexican laborer who worked in the United States on farms and railroads in order to ease labor shortages during World War II)
agricultural laborer; agricultural labourer (a person who tills the soil for a living)
Derivation:
labour (work hard)
Context examples:
The cottagers and labourers keep their children at home, their business being only to till and cultivate the earth, and therefore their education is of little consequence to the public: but the old and diseased among them, are supported by hospitals; for begging is a trade unknown in this empire.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Look at that castle which overhangs yon precipice; and that also on the island, almost concealed amongst the foliage of those lovely trees; and now that group of labourers coming from among their vines; and that village half hid in the recess of the mountain.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
I said aside, to Traddles, that I wondered whether it occurred to anybody, that there was a striking contrast between these plentiful repasts of choice quality, and the dinners, not to say of paupers, but of soldiers, sailors, labourers, the great bulk of the honest, working community; of whom not one man in five hundred ever dined half so well.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Rosamond a sufferer, a labourer, a female apostle?
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
These people were not so well clad as the first, whose servants or labourers they seemed to be; for, upon some words he spoke, they went to reap the corn in the field where I lay.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
A young man, a farm-labourer, as come by us on his way to market with his mas'r's drays—a journey of over five hundred mile, theer and back—made offers fur to take her fur his wife (wives is very scarce theer), and then to set up fur their two selves in the Bush.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
I hold that the more arid and unreclaimed the soil where the Christian labourer's task of tillage is appointed him—the scantier the meed his toil brings—the higher the honour.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
We passed through one of the town gates, and went about three miles into the country, where I saw many labourers working with several sorts of tools in the ground, but was not able to conjecture what they were about: neither did observe any expectation either of corn or grass, although the soil appeared to be excellent.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
At first Miss Mills thought it was a quarrel, and that we were verging on the Desert of Sahara; but she soon found out how matters stood, for my dear affectionate little Dora, embracing her, began exclaiming that I was a poor labourer; and then cried for me, and embraced me, and asked me would I let her give me all her money to keep, and then fell on Miss Mills's neck, sobbing as if her tender heart were broken.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
They are making hay, too, in Thornfield meadows: or rather, the labourers are just quitting their work, and returning home with their rakes on their shoulders, now, at the hour I arrive.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
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