sharpie
UK/ˈʃɑːpi//ˈʃɑɹpi/
sharpie noun: an alert person. Also the clipping of sharp-shinned hawk.
Noun (1)
sharpie (plural sharpies)
- An alert person.
- Eunice Marshall asked in a bored tone, "Are you, by any chance, selling magazines?"
Daisy grinned childishly, enjoying Eunice's mistake. "You're quite a sharpie, aren't you, ma'am? You figured me out a whole lot faster than most people do."1988, D. Miller Morgan, A Lovely Night to Kill, page 64 - You have to beat a lot of real sharpies, guys who have been playing for years.2012, Richard W. Munchkin, Gambling Wizards, page 109
- Eunice Marshall asked in a bored tone, "Are you, by any chance, selling magazines?"
- A knowledgeable fisherman.
- Eventually DeBlasio became a sharpie.
- In New York and New Jersey coastal fishing parlance a “sharpie” is one who fishes seven days a week all summer long, selling his fish to the market to make a living. Sharpies supposedly have fishing down to a science, to such a degree that they only go to particular places, at particular times...1976 December, Ken Schultz, Field & Stream Fishing Contest Winners: Nothing but the Best, Field & Stream, page 78
- A swindler.
- Three booths down a couple of sharpies were selling each other pieces of Twentieth Century Fox, using double arm gestures instead of money.1953, Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye, Penguin, published 2010, page 102
- A long, narrow fishing boat used in shallow waters.
- He brought this pair of sharpies, the Lucia and the Ella, to Beaufort by schooner and began to use them for fishing, oyster dredging, and even as a passenger ferry and party boat.
The sharpie is a flat-bottomed, shallow-draft vessel of moderate size, comparable to a sloop or schooner.1995, Rodney Barfield, Seasoned by Salt: A Historical Album of the Outer Banks, page 168 - On the other end of the spectrum are the flat-bottomed sharpies. The earliest sharpies were developed in the mid-nineteenth century as the ideal boats for the oyster fishery of the Connecticut shore.2006, Greg Rössel, The Boatbuilder's Apprentice, page 293
- He brought this pair of sharpies, the Lucia and the Ella, to Beaufort by schooner and began to use them for fishing, oyster dredging, and even as a passenger ferry and party boat.
- A member of a violent, fashionably dressed youth gang of the 1960s and 1970s.
- The Circle Ballroom in High Street Preston was another popular sharpie hang-out.[…]Sharpies were all deep drinkers.2006, Iain McIntyre, Tomorrow Is Today: Australia in the Psychedelic Era, 1966-1970, page 47
- Synonyms:
- sharp
- A Sharpie or other brand of felt-tipped marker pen.
Proper noun capitalized: Sharpie
Sharpie
- A brand of pointed permanent markers used primarily for labeling items in boldface, signing autographs, etc.
Noun (2) capitalized: Sharpie
Sharpie (plural Sharpies)
- A permanent marker of the above brand.
Also used as
sharpie is also the clipping of sharp-shinned hawk.
sharpie is also the clipping of sharp-tailed sandpiper.
Synonyms of sharpie
Forms of sharpie
| plural | sharpies |
|---|---|
| plural | Sharpies |
Origin of sharpie
From sharp + -ie (“diminutive suffix”).
From sharp + -ie.
Words formed from sharpie
Words that rhyme with sharpie
Questions about sharpie
- What does sharpie mean?
- Sharpie means an alert person.
- What part of speech is sharpie?
- Sharpie can be a noun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce sharpie?
- Sharpie is pronounced /ˈʃɑɹpi/ (US).
- What is the plural of sharpie?
- The plural of sharpie is sharpies.
Words near sharpie in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: sharpie (page history and authors); Sharpie (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-sharpie.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-Sharpie.wav.
Cite this entry: “sharpie.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sharpie. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.