roughneck

roughneck

English

Etymology

rough +‎ neck

Noun

roughneck (plural roughnecks)

1. (colloquial, chiefly US) Someone with rough manners; a rowdy or uncouth person. [from 19th c.]
   • 2019, Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other, Penguin Books (2020), page 202:

     LaTisha has long wanted to show Carole sheʼs not the roughneck she used to be, the roughneck who wasnʼt good enough to be her friend.

2. (colloquial, chiefly US) An ironworker; a dirty or low-paid worker, a labourer. [from 20th c.]
3. (colloquial, chiefly US) A labourer on an oil rig. [from 20th c.]
   • 2013, Philipp Meyer, The Son, Simon & Schuster 2014, p. 286:

     As for the minerals, there has been a good deal of drilling along the big river; trucks and roughnecks no longer garner any notice.

Translations

someone with rough manners; a rowdy or uncouth person

Bulgarian: грубиян (bg) m (grubijan) German: Raubein (de) n Hungarian: tahó (hu), bunkó (hu), (dated in this sense) vagány (hu) Portuguese: grosseirão m, malcriado (pt) m

ironworker; dirty or low-paid worker, laborer — See also translations at ironworker,‎ laborer

Hungarian: rakodómunkás (hu), segédmunkás (hu)

a laborer on an oil rig

Hungarian: olajfúró

See also

• roustabout, oil trash
• roughneck on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Verb

roughneck (third-person singular simple present roughnecks, present participle roughnecking, simple past and past participle roughnecked)

1. To work as a laborer on an oil rig.
   • 2009, January 13, “Michael Brick”, in Racing's Last Frontier‎:

     There was a time not long ago when this region appeared as some enduring mystification, its citizenry best known for roughnecking on the North Slope […]