wharfie
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
1
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A wharf worker: synonym of dockworker.
Australian usage; New Zealand usage; Colloquial; Informal
Example Sentences
- "“It’s a twenty-four-hour stoppage,” he said. “The wharfies went to the Arbitration Court for another pound a week for something or other, and they didn’t get it, so they’ve stopped work for a day to show their displeasure […]”"
- "One night, soon after the battle of the Coral Sea, the US transport ship Shenandoah steamed up the Brisbane River to the wharves at Hamilton. She tied up just before eleven o′clock and at midnight a fresh shift of wharfies began unloading her cavernous holds."
- "But a group of wharfies rushed the ballot box, opened it, and ripped up some voting slips and threw others over a fence."
- "In Fremantle the wharfies were crucial to my preselection. Gordon Harris was the secretary of the Fremantle wharfies, and we got on amicably until he decided to stand against me in 1958."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *hwerbaną Proto-West Germanic *hwerban Old English hweorfan Middle English wharf English wharf English -ie English wharfie From wharf + -ie.