Word.ws English Dictionary

roughnecks

roughnecks is the plural of roughneck.

Meaning of roughneck

Noun

roughneck (plural roughnecks)

  1. (US, colloquial) 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
    Synonyms:
    roustabout
  2. (US, colloquial, dated) A dirty or low-paid worker, a labourer; an ironworker in an ironworks or a steelworker in a steelworks.
    Synonyms:
    roustabout
  3. (US, colloquial) 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

See all 4 meanings of roughneck

Questions about roughnecks

What is roughnecks the plural of?
Roughnecks is the plural of roughneck.

Words near roughnecks in the dictionary

  1. roughly
  2. roughly speaking
  3. roughneck
  4. roughnecked
  5. roughnecking
  6. roughnecks
  7. roughness
  8. roughness length
  9. roughness lengths
  10. roughnesses
  11. roughometer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: roughnecks (page history and authors); roughneck (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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