Word.ws English Dictionary

bludger

bludger noun: a pimp, a man living off the earnings of a harlot.

Noun

bludger (plural bludgers)

  1. (Australia, slang) A pimp, a man living off the earnings of a harlot.
    • Oscar pondered for a while, then said, "Oh, but halfcastes don't seem to be any good at all. All the men here are loafers and bludgers, the women practically all whores."1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter VII, in Capricornia, page 106
    • This was the bludger or, in American parlance, the pimp, a man who lived on the earnings of prostitution. He was often the husband or boyfriend of a prostitute and could be actively involved in protecting or touting for the prostitute. Parliamentarians described the bludger as ‘the most detestable...1997, Barbara Ann Sullivan, The Politics of Sex: Prostitution and Pornography in Australia since 1945, page 30
  2. (Australia, New Zealand, derogatory, slang) A person who avoids working, or doing their share of work, a loafer, a hanger-on, one who does not pull their weight.
    • If she is doing the work of two parents because her husband has died or left her or is violent and has driven her and the kids from home, then suddenly she is a bludger.2005, Australian House of Representatives, Parliamentary Debates: House of Representatives: Official Hansard, volume 270, page 84
  3. A widespread species of large marine fish, Carangoides gymnostethus, in the jack family, Carangidae.
    Synonyms:
    bludger trevally, nakedbreast trevally, Bleeker's jackfish
  4. A ball used in the sports of Quidditch and Muggle Quidditch.

Synonyms of bludger

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of bludger

Forms of bludger

pluralbludgers

Origin of bludger

Corruption of bludgeoner.

Words formed from bludger

Questions about bludger

What does bludger mean?
Bludger means a pimp, a man living off the earnings of a harlot.
What part of speech is bludger?
Bludger is a noun.
What is the plural of bludger?
The plural of bludger is bludgers.

Words near bludger in the dictionary

  1. bludgeoning
  2. bludgeonings
  3. bludgeonman
  4. bludgeonry
  5. bludgeons
  6. bludger
  7. bludgers
  8. bludges
  9. bludging
  10. bluds
  11. Bludsworth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bludger (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: EN-AU ck1 bludger.ogg.

Cite this entry: “bludger.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bludger. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.