sundowners

Noun

sundowner (plural sundowners)

1. (Australia, obsolete) An itinerant worker, such as a swagman, who arrives at a farm too late in the day to do any work, but readily accepts food and lodging.
   • What he saw was not usual in this part of Australia - a sundowner, a bush waif who tramps from north to south or from east to west, never working, cadging rations from the far-flung homesteads and having the ability of the camel to do without water, or find it.2008, Arthur Upfield, edited by Kees de Hoog, Wisp of Wool and Disk of Silver: Up and Down Australia, page 279
2. (Australia, obsolete) An itinerant worker, a swagman.
3. A sea captain who shows harsh discipline by requiring all hands to be on board by sundown.
   • Arrogant, aloof, and suspicious, a “sundowner,” or strict disciplinarian, King inspired respect in many but affection in few.1985, Ronald H. Spector, Eagle Against the Sun
4. (colloquial) A patient, usually demented, who tends to become agitated in the evening.
   • These patients may improve by day only to relapse at night (nocturnal delirium or sundowner's syndrome).1977, Jules Hymen Masserman, Current Psychiatric Therapies, page 179
5. (Africa, Southern, especially) A cocktail consumed at sunset, or to signify the end of the day.
   • The cocktail, the universal “sherry and bitters” and sundowner will have to be retained.1918, Robert Valentine Dolbey, Sketches of the East Africa Campaign, page 117
6. A cocktail party held in the early evening.
   • The Sundowner is basically a cocktail party with a buffet on a riverbank in the bush.2005, Edward M. Bruner, Culture on Tour: Ethnographies of Travel,, page 83

See all 9 meanings of sundowner