shoobie
shoobie noun: a visitor to a coastal area who looks or acts out of place; especially an awkward or annoying tourist.
Noun
shoobie (plural shoobies)
- A visitor to a coastal area who looks or acts out of place; especially an awkward or annoying tourist.
- For Brigantine residents, the sight of an out-of-towner, or "shoobie" as locals refer to tourists, maniacally jumping about and swatting at his legs, is as common on the beach as lifeguards and bikinis.2005. Patrick Costello. Greenhead Politics: The Story Brigantine Taxpayers Were Never Told, Page 9
Forms of shoobie
| plural | shoobies |
|---|
Origin of shoobie
Likely from shoe in some way, if not a clipping of shoebox, with diminutive -ie. Other hypotheses appear unconvincing. Compare Benny (“northern or out-of-state tourist to the Jersey Shore”), or terms like touron and yuppie. The popular legend states that the term is attested from circa late 1800s, where new railroads to the Jersey Shore brought in floods of tourists to the beaches, who often carried their own lunches (rather than dined at seaside restaurants), packed by the trains in a shoebox. These tourists were then stereotyped for their habits, and the sense widened.
Words that rhyme with shoobie
Questions about shoobie
- What does shoobie mean?
- Shoobie means a visitor to a coastal area who looks or acts out of place; especially an awkward or annoying tourist.
- What part of speech is shoobie?
- Shoobie is a noun.
- What is the plural of shoobie?
- The plural of shoobie is shoobies.
Words near shoobie in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: shoobie (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-shoobie.ogg.
Cite this entry: “shoobie.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shoobie. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.