wharfie

English

Etymology

From wharf +‎ -ie.

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Noun

wharfie (plural wharfies)

1. (Australia, New Zealand, informal, colloquial) A wharf labourer or stevedore.
   • 1952, Neville Shute, chapter 9, in The Far Country‎, London: Heinemann:

     “It’s a twenty-four-hour stoppage,” he said. “The wharfies went to the Arbitration Court for another pound a week for something or other, and they didn’t get it, so they’ve stopped work for a day to show their displeasure […] ”

   • 2000, David Crookes, Someday Soon, unnumbered page:

     One night, soon after the battle of the Coral Sea, the US transport ship Shenandoah steamed up the Brisbane River to the wharves at Hamilton. She tied up just before eleven o′clock and at midnight a fresh shift of wharfies began unloading her cavernous holds.

   • 2008, Andrew Faulkner, Arthur Blackburn, VC: An Australian Hero, His Men, and Their Two World Wars, page 152:

     But a group of wharfies rushed the ballot box, opened it, and ripped up some voting slips and threw others over a fence.

   • 2009, Kim Edward Beazley, Father of the House: The Memoirs of Kim E. Beazley, page 131:

     In Fremantle the wharfies were crucial to my preselection. Gordon Harris was the secretary of the Fremantle wharfies, and we got on amicably until he decided to stand against me in 1958.

Synonyms

• stevedore (UK)
• docker
• dockworker
• longshoreman (US)

Translations

wharf laborer or stevedore

Finnish: telakkatyöntekijä (wharf labourer); ahtaaja (fi) (stevedore)