sharpies

Noun

sharpie (plural sharpies)

1. (colloquial) 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
2. (US, regional) 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
3. (US) 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
4. (US) 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
5. (Australia) 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

6. A Sharpie or other brand of felt-tipped marker pen.

See all 8 meanings of sharpie