Definition of "roustabout"
roustabout
noun
plural roustabouts
verb
third-person singular simple present roustabouts, present participle roustabouting, simple past and past participle roustabouted
(intransitive) To work as a roustabout.
Quotations
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.
1896, John Thomas (attributed), “Get Up, Jack! John, Sit Down!”, in John A[very] Lomax, Alan Lomax, editors, American Ballads and Folk Songs, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, published 1934, printed 1967, page 494
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.
1907, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], ““Next to Reading Matter””, in Everybody’s Magazine, volume XVII, page 593, column 1
Thereafter, the youth gives many years to aimless wandering about the South and the Middle West. He roustabouts with a carnival […]
1932 March 19, Vincent Wall, “Poor Whites”, in Saturday Review of Literature; reprinted in Scott MacDonald, Critical Essays on Erskine Caldwell, Boston, Mass.: G.K. Hall & Co., 1981, page 9