casuals

Noun

casual (plural casuals)

1. (Australia, New Zealand, UK) A worker who is only working for a company occasionally, not as its permanent employee.
2. A worker who is doing a particular type of job temporarily, not as a lifetime career.
   • Of the scavagers proper there are, as in all classes of unskilled labour, that is to say, of labour which requires no previous apprenticeship, and to which any one can “turn his hand” on an emergency, two distinct orders of workmen, “the regulars and casuals” to adopt the trade terms; that is to...1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, published 1861
3. A soldier temporarily at a place of duty, usually en route to another place of duty.
4. (UK, historical) A member of a group of football hooligans who wear expensive designer clothing to avoid police attention; see casual (subculture).
   • At 15, he became a casual: one of the label-wearing, wedge-flicking, swaggering hooligan peacock boys who dominated the north-west when I was growing up. Casuals were working-class lads (called Perry boys in Manchester) who loved football, fighting and brilliant sportswear.2019 September 14, Miranda Sawyer, “Mark Leckey: ‘There has to be a belief that art has this power, this charisma'”, in The Guardian

   Synonyms:

   dresser, Perry boy

5. (UK, historical) One who receives relief for a night in a parish to which he or she does not belong; a vagrant in the casual ward.
   • During the great prevalence of vagrancy, the cost of the sick was far greater than the expense of relief. In the quarter ending June 1848, no less than 322 casuals were under medical treatment, either in the workhouse of the Wandsworth and Clapham union or at the London Fever Hospital.1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, published 1861
6. (derogatory, informal) A player of casual games.
   • The devs dumbed the game down so the casuals could enjoy it.

See all 16 meanings of casual