roustabout

noun

1. (US)An unskilled laborer, especially at an oilfield, at a circus or on a ship.

   “The U. is my own Alma Mater, and I am proud to be known as an alumni, but there are certain instructors there who seem to think we ought to turn the conduct of the nation over to hoboes and roustabouts.”

   “Then Sísiphos in torment I beheld / being roustabout to a tremendous boulder.”

   “Brooklyn Tony, who had run away from home to be a circus roustabout, became a poster artist and eventually an Abstract Expressionist.”

   “She works in McGregor, North Dakota as a roustabout pusher. That means she and her crew help fix and maintain the drilling sites.”

   “See also quotations under rouseabout.”

verb

1. (intransitive)To work as a roustabout.

   “When Jack is old and weatherbeat, / Too old to roustabout, / In some rum-shop they’ll let him stop, / At eight bells he’s turned out.”

   “I was due to bust through that cellar door here to-night, so I hurried the rest of the way up the river, roustabouting on a lower coast packet that made a landing for every fisherman that wanted a plug of tobacco.”

   “Thereafter, the youth gives many years to aimless wandering about the South and the Middle West. He roustabouts with a carnival […]”