navvy
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of navvy
First recorded in 1825–35; short for navigator
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The effect wasn’t androgynous so much as deeply disconcerting: Priest was, in writer Julie Burchill’s memorable assessment, “built like a hod-carrier” and looked “like a navvy who’d stolen all your makeup”.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 5, 2020
They were known as the East London Group, and among their ranks were humble office clerks, a navvy, a window cleaner, a shop assistant, a printer, a basket-weaver and an errand boy.
From BBC ● Sep. 23, 2017
He is also likened to a navvy, a sweep, a stiff Dutch doll, and an immense feather mattress.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 24, 2012
He once said, and allowed no secret to be made of it, that he would "rather talk to an intelligent navvy than to a dull duke."
From Time Magazine Archive
"I hope you are," says I; "it is n't in your station in life that you can go out as a navvy, and with your two daughters the greatest beauties in the town."
From The Dodd Family Abroad, Vol. II by Lever, Charles James
So many men died, many of them "navvies" who moved between major construction projects, they had to make local graveyards bigger.
From BBC ● May 1, 2026
They helped build the C&O Canal and worked as navvies, or laborers, in its port.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 4, 2020
To build the Paris-Rouen-Le Havre line in 1841-7, they “imported” not only an engineer, but also thousands of British navvies, miners, bricklayers and mechanics.
From Time ● Oct. 26, 2016
And Dan gave us a great segment about the thousands of navvies who worked like beasts and lived in mud huts.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 19, 2013
Tunnils sink and navvies drink, And chapels are upsetting; For Railway Shares nobody cares, And iverybody’s fretting.
From Random Rhymes and Rambles by Wright, William Aldis
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
