LABOURER

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does labourer mean? 

• LABOURER (noun)
  The noun LABOURER has 1 sense:

1. someone who works with their hands; someone engaged in manual labor

  Familiarity information: LABOURER used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• LABOURER (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Someone who works with their hands; someone engaged in manual labor

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

jack; laborer; labourer; manual laborer

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"):

miner; mineworker (laborer who works in a mine)

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)

agricultural laborer; agricultural labourer (a person who tills the soil for a living)

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)

Derivation:

labour (work hard)

 Context examples 

Far from that, Diana; his sole idea in proposing to me is to procure a fitting fellow-labourer in his Indian toils.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

We travelled at the time of the vintage and heard the song of the labourers as we glided down the stream.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

When dinner was done, my master went out to his labourers, and, as I could discover by his voice and gesture, gave his wife strict charge to take care of me.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

He is poorly dressed, and yet does not appear to be a labourer.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

She ascertained from me in a few words what it was all about, comforted Dora, and gradually convinced her that I was not a labourer—from my manner of stating the case I believe Dora concluded that I was a navigator, and went balancing myself up and down a plank all day with a wheelbarrow—and so brought us together in peace.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Uppercross was a moderate-sized village, which a few years back had been completely in the old English style, containing only two houses superior in appearance to those of the yeomen and labourers; the mansion of the squire, with its high walls, great gates, and old trees, substantial and unmodernized, and the compact, tight parsonage, enclosed in its own neat garden, with a vine and a pear-tree trained round its casements; but upon the marriage of the young 'squire, it had received the improvement of a farm-house elevated into a cottage, for his residence, and Uppercross Cottage, with its veranda, French windows, and other prettiness, was quite as likely to catch the traveller's eye as the more consistent and considerable aspect and premises of the Great House, about a quarter of a mile farther on.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

Guess my surprise, when I found that I had been asking the most unreasonable, most impossible thing in the world; had offended all the farmers, all the labourers, all the hay in the parish!

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Whilst the five were trotting thus one behind the other, two labourers came with their hoes from the fields; the parson called out to them and begged that they would set him and the sexton free.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

What nonsense one talks, Miss Woodhouse, when hard at work, if one talks at all;—your real workmen, I suppose, hold their tongues; but we gentlemen labourers if we get hold of a word—Miss Fairfax said something about conjecturing.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

"Jane, come with me to India: come as my helpmeet and fellow-labourer."

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)