roughneck
/ˈɹʌfˌnɛk/
roughneck noun: a labourer on an oil rig or in the oilpatch, either skilled or semiskilled.
Noun
roughneck (plural roughnecks)
- A labourer on an oil rig or in the oilpatch, either skilled or semiskilled.
- This first ship had a small geophysical-type drilling rig mounted over the side of the ship with a steel grid runround for the roughnecks, who stood in knee-deep water while making connections or pulling the drill string.1992, Elmer P. Wheaton, “William Bradford Whitehill Rand”, in Memorial Tributes: Volume 5, page 234
- As for the minerals, there has been a good deal of drilling along the big river; trucks and roughnecks no longer garner any notice.2013, Philipp Meyer, The Son, Simon & Schuster, published 2014, page 286
- Synonyms:
- roustabout
- A dirty or low-paid worker, a labourer; an ironworker in an ironworks or a steelworker in a steelworks.
- Synonyms:
- roustabout
- Someone with rough manners; a rowdy or uncouth person.
- LaTisha has long wanted to show Carole sheʼs not the roughneck she used to be, the roughneck who wasnʼt good enough to be her friend.2019, Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other, Penguin Books (2020), page 202
Verb
roughneck (third-person singular simple present roughnecks, present participle roughnecking, simple past and past participle roughnecked)
- To work as a laborer on an oil rig.
- There was a time not long ago when this region appeared as some enduring mystification, its citizenry best known for roughnecking on the North Slope […]2009 January 13, Michael Brick, “Racing's Last Frontier”, in New York Times
roughneck meaning in Tamil and Malayalam
roughneck in Tamil
- எண்ணெய்க் கிணற்றுத் தொழிலாளி, முரடன்
roughneck in Malayalam
- ruffian, lout, thug
- തെമ്മാടി, ദുഷ്ടൻ, വിഷകൃമി, പോക്കിരി, തിമിരൻ, ഘാതകൻ
Synonyms of roughneck
Forms of roughneck
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | roughnecks |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | roughnecks |
| present participle | roughnecking |
| past participle | roughnecked |
| past | roughnecked |
Origin of roughneck
From rough + neck, originally "someone who works a manual labour job".
Questions about roughneck
- What does roughneck mean?
- Roughneck means a labourer on an oil rig or in the oilpatch, either skilled or semiskilled.
- What is roughneck in Tamil?
- Roughneck in Tamil is எண்ணெய்க் கிணற்றுத் தொழிலாளி, முரடன். See Roughneck meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is roughneck?
- Roughneck can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce roughneck?
- Roughneck is pronounced /ˈɹʌfˌnɛk/.
- What is the plural of roughneck?
- The plural of roughneck is roughnecks.
Words near roughneck in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: roughneck (page history and authors); roughneck (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); roughneck (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Neøn-roughneck.wav.
Cite this entry: “roughneck.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/roughneck. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.