Word Meanings - ROUSTABOUT - Book Publishers vocabulary database

A laborer, especially a deck hand, on a river steamboat, who moves the cargo, loads and unloads wood, and the like; in an opprobrious sense, a shiftless vagrant who lives by chance jobs.

Related words: (words related to ROUSTABOUT)

• OPPROBRIOUS
  1. Expressive of opprobrium; attaching disgrace; reproachful; scurrilous; as, opprobrious language. They . . . vindicate themselves in terms no less opprobrious than those by which they are attacked. Addison. 2. Infamous; despised; rendered
• CHANCELLERY
  Chancellorship. Gower.
• SENSE
  A faculty, possessed by animals, of perceiving external objects by means of impressions made upon certain organs (sensory or sense organs) of the body, or of perceiving changes in the condition of the body; as, the senses of sight, smell, hearing,
• VAGRANTNESS
  State of being vagrant; vagrancy.
• RIVER
  One who rives or splits.
• CARGOOSE
  A species of grebe ; the crested grebe.
• CHANCEFUL
  Hazardous. Spenser.
• RIVERLING
  A rivulet. Sylvester.
• CHANCE
  Probability. Note: The mathematical expression, of a chance is the ratio of frequency with which an event happens in the long run. If an event may happen in a ways and may fail in b ways, and each of these a + b ways is equally likely, the chance,
• STEAMBOAT
  A boat or vessel propelled by steam power; -- generally used of river or coasting craft, as distinguished from ocean steamers.
• LOADSTAR; LODESTAR
  A star that leads; a guiding star; esp., the polestar; the cynosure. Chaucer. " Your eyes are lodestars." Shak. The pilot can no loadstar see. Spenser.
• CHANCELLORSHIP
  The office of a chancellor; the time during which one is chancellor.
• CHANCEL
  lattices, crossbars. (The chancel was formerly inclosed with lattices That part of a church, reserved for the use of the clergy, where the altar, or communion table, is placed. Hence, in modern use; All that part of a cruciform church which is
• RIVERY
  Having rivers; as, a rivery country. Drayton.
• RIVERET
  A rivulet. Drayton.
• SHIFTLESS
  Destitute of expedients, or not using successful expedients; characterized by failure, especially by failure to provide for one's own support, through negligence or incapacity; hence, lazy; improvident; thriftless; as, a shiftless fellow; shiftless
• LOADSTONE; LODESTONE
  A piece of magnetic iron ore possessing polarity like a magnetic needle. See Magnetite.
• LABORER
  One who labors in a toilsome occupation; a person who does work that requires strength rather than skill, as distinguished from that of an artisan.
• RIVERSIDE
  The side or bank of a river.
• CHANCEABLY
  By chance.
• INSENSE
  To make to understand; to instruct. Halliwell.
• COLABORER
  One who labors with another; an associate in labor.
• ARCHCHANCELLOR
  A chief chancellor; -- an officer in the old German empire, who presided over the secretaries of the court.
• UNDERLABORER
  An assistant or subordinate laborer. Locke.
• PERCHANCE
  By chance; perhaps; peradventure.
• SUPERCARGO
  An officer or person in a merchant ship, whose duty is to manage the sales, and superintend the commercial concerns, of the voyage.
• NONSENSE
  1. That which is not sense, or has no sense; words, or language, which have no meaning, or which convey no intelligible ideas; absurdity. 2. Trifles; things of no importance. Nonsense verses, lines made by taking any words which occur,
• MISCHANCE
  Ill luck; ill fortune; mishap. Chaucer. Never come mischance between us twain. Shak. Syn. -- Calamity; misfortune; misadventure; mishap; infelicity; disaster. See Calamity.
• BECHANCE
  By chance; by accident. Grafton.