navvy
Americannoun
-
navvies
plural
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
In Norway he had been a cobbler's apprentice, woodsman, stevedore and road navvy.
From Time Magazine Archive
He–ah–reminds me so much of a navvy, you know.”
From Into the Primitive by Robert Ames Bennett
They helped build the C&O Canal and worked as navvies, or laborers, in its port.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 4, 2020
Prof Rotherham said it may have originally arrived with Welsh "navvies digging out the cuttings for the canal systems".
From BBC ● Sep. 1, 2018
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
I'm not advocating navvies but maybe we need a touch of 19th-century confidence.
From The Guardian ● Mar. 6, 2011
There was now a little band of four Christians among the navvies.
From The Little Missis by Charlotte Skinner
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.
