different between toolie vs coolie

English

Etymology

From tool +? -ie.

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -u?li

Noun

toolie (plural toolies)

1. (colloquial, oil industry) A tool dresser.
   • 2013, Philipp Meyer, The Son, Simon & Schuster 2014, p. 287:

     He and the geologist went to explore in the sandy Garcia pastures. The rig builder, toolie, and driller retired to the Colonel's porch to drink.

2. (Australia, slang) An adult reveller who deliberately travels to a destination where schoolies congregate, often to solicit sex from the schoolies.
   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:toolie.
3. (slang, US, MLE, and possibly wider) A gun.

Anagrams

• lootie, oolite, oölite

English

Alternative forms

• cooly, kuli, quli, koelie, etc.

Etymology

From Hindi ????? (qul?) and Urdu ???? (qul?, “hired laborer”), possibly from Ottoman Turkish ???? (kul, “servant”). Another theory says that it is named after a Gujarati tribe or caste of that name. Other forms occur in Bengali ???? (kuli) and Tamil ???? (k?li, “daily hire”). Possibly also influenced by Hindi ???? (kol?, “weaver; low-class”).

Mandarin ?? (k?lì, “hard labor”) may have been influenced by cognates of the above Hindi word in other languages and may have further influenced English.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?ku?li/
• Rhymes: -u?li

Noun

coolie (plural coolies)

1. (offensive) An unskilled Asian worker, usually of Chinese or Indian descent; a labourer; a porter. Coolies were frequently transported to other countries in the 19th and early 20th centuries as indentured labourers.
   • 1992, Jan Breman, E. Valentine Daniel, Conclusion: The Maiking of a Coolie, E. Valentine Daniel, Henry Bernstein, Tom Brass (editors), Plantations, Proletarians, and Peasants in Colonial Asia, Frank Cass & Co., page 268,

     Coolie-identity is as much the product of self-perception as it is the construction of a category by those who did not belong to it. It is these constructions that historically constituted a coolie in the matrix of power relations which this essay seeks to partially comprehend.

   • 2008, Lisa Yun, The Coolie Speaks: Chinese Indentured Laborers and African Slaves in Cuba, Temple University Press, page xix,

     Community histories did not necessarily feature the coolie, partly due to the fact that “coolie” is a classed term. Asian coolies were regarded as lowly laborers.

2. (offensive, Trinidad and Tobago, Caribbean, Guyana, Jamaican, South Africa and other parts of Africa) An Indian or a person of Indian descent.

Derived terms

• Coolie Christmas
• coolie hat
• coolie orange

Translations

Descendants

• ? Romanian: culi

References

• Yule, Henry and Burnell, A. C. (1886): Hobson-Jobson The Anglo-Indian Dictionary. Reprint: Ware, Hertfordshire. Wordsworth Editions Limited. 1996.

• Le grand dictionnaire Ricci de la langue chinoise, (2001), Vol. III, p. 833.