A rough fellow who does occasional jobs.
[1746. In ‘An Exmoor Scolding,’ Gent. Mag., xvi. 353, one woman calls another “a rubacrock, rouzeabout, platvooted, zidlemouthed swashbucket.”]
1868. As the steamer was leaving the levee, about forty black deck-hands or “roustabouts” gathered at the bows.—F. G. Gedney, ‘In the Saddle—On the Plains,’ Putnam’s Mag., ii. 342/2 (Sept.). (N.E.D.)
1875. I want a slush-bucket and a brush; I ’m only fit for a roustabout.—Mark Twain, ‘Old Times on the Mississippi,’ Atlantic Monthly, xxxv. p. 286/1 (March).
1877. The vagabonds, the roustabouts, the criminals, and all the dregs of society.—Harper’s Weekly, March (Bartlett).
1890. The Century Dict. cites the N.Y. Sun, March 23: “an old Mississippi roustabout.”
1910. It should be easy to obtain the services of a dozen American roustabouts to man the quick-firing gun, and serve as a bond of sympathy between Gen. Chamorro and the United States, and a possible reason for American intervention in case of emergency.—N.Y. Evening Post, Aug. 25.
1911. Another old-time institution—the steamboat roustabout—may pass away in the near future. The Upper Mississippi River Improvement Association declared the other day its undying hostility to the roustabout for loading and unloading steamboats, and went on record as in favor of his being superseded in the steamboat business by mechanical contrivances which, it was said, would reduce the cost of bundling freight and the uncertainties of getting labor at the big wharves. Singing at his work, the roustabout was a rather picturesque character, but there would be no great grief over his passing.—Chattanooga Times, Oct.
