different between laborer vs roustabout

English

Alternative forms

• labourer

Etymology

labor +? -er

Pronunciation

• (US) IPA^(key): /?le?.b?.?/

Noun

laborer (plural laborers)

1. (American spelling) One who uses body strength instead of intellectual power to earn a wage, usually hourly.

Related terms

• laborist

Translations

Old French

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin lab?r?re, present active infinitive of lab?r?.

Verb

laborer

1. to work; to labor

Conjugation

This verb conjugates as a first-group verb ending in -er. This verb has a stressed present stem labeur distinct from the unstressed stem labor. Old French conjugation varies significantly by date and by region. The following conjugation should be treated as a guide.

Related terms

• labour

Descendants

• Middle French: labourer
  • French: labourer
• Norman: labouother
• ? Middle English: labouren
  • English: labour, labor
  • Scots: laubour

English

Alternative forms

• rouseabout

Etymology

Unknown

Noun

roustabout (plural roustabouts)

1. (chiefly US) an unskilled laborer, especially at an oilfield, at a circus or on a ship, 19th c.
   • 1961, Robert Fitzgerald (translator), Homer, Odyssey, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Book Eleven, 668-9,

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

   • 1974, Saul Bellow, "Him with His Foot in His Mouth" in Collected Stories, Penguin, 2001, p. 377,

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

   • 2013, Celeste Headlee, NPR, 7 January, 2013, [1]

     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.

Translations

Further reading

• roustabout on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• tourabouts