| 释义 |
rough neck, rough-neck, roughneck colloq. (orig. U.S.).
[rough a.]
1. a. A rough or rowdy; a person of rough habits or quarrelsome disposition; an uncultivated or ignorant person.
1836Col. Crockett's Exploits & Adventures Texas iv. 58 You may be called a drunken dog by some of the clean shirt and silk stocking gentry; but the real rough necks will style you a jovial fellow. 1903Sun (N.Y.) 25 Nov. 2 The police were kept on the jump chasing away gangs of ‘rough necks’ (the pet name for the rowdies in Sam Park's late union) who went from building to building trying to intimidate members of the new union. 1903N.Y. Evening Post 17 Aug. 7/7 His [sc. Sam Park's] stated income amounts to union wages from his union of ‘rough-necks’, as the iron-workers call themselves, as walking delegate. 1917J. M. Grider War Birds (1927) 30 But there are a few rough-necks in every outfit that will cause trouble and get the whole bunch in wrong. 1918[see non-academic s.v. non- 3]. 1929J. Buchan Courts of Morning i. iii. 51 The water-front was a perfect rat-hole for every criminal in the Pacific—every brand of rough-neck and dope-smuggler and crook. 1940E. N. Teall Putting Words to Work i. xxi. 147 The business man will say that if a university can afford to write such letters there is no need for a roughneck like him to bother. 1959‘J. Christopher’ Scent of White Poppies vi. 91 She has me tabbed for a roughneck... She has enough on with civilizing you, without having me to cope with as well. 1972D. Haston In High Places i. 14 Jimmy was twenty-eight, and already a qualified architect; we were seventeen-year-old roughnecks. Basically I think..he was at heart a roughneck himself. 1979Time 13 Aug. 28/3 Like Lewis, countless other managers and entrepreneurs are coming to Denver to live amid its comfort and culture while their hired roughnecks and miners squeeze the energy from the rural out-posts.
b. transf. and fig.
Some examples are hardly distinguishable from sense 1 a.
1916Rio Grande Rattler 13 Sept. 1 Ten buck [private] packers, known in the army as ‘rough necks’— a title that usually fits the situation nicely. 1916H. L. Wilson Somewhere in Red Gap v. 208 And so the party moved on for an hour or two, with the roguish young rough-necks cutting up merrily at all times, pretending to be cowboys coming to town on pay day. 1918Dialect Notes V. 27 Rough-neck, n. 1. A rowdy. 2. A woman or girl of easy morals but not a prostitute. 3. A dance, open to anyone who ‘has the price’, at which ‘anything goes’. General. 1926Maines & Grant Wise-Crack Dict. 13/1 Razor back, roughneck or stake driver in a circus. 1926F. Scott Fitzgerald Great Gatsby iii. 59 I'm Gatsby, he said... I was looking at an elegant young roughneck. 1941E. P. O'Donnell Great Big Doorstep iv. 59 ‘Are you a rough-neck?’ ‘Yes. I'm in the bull-gang so far. I'm trying to get in the office.’ 1960[see mauvais coucheur]. 1978Amer. Poetry Rev. July/Aug. 36/2 He was also an intellectual roughneck.
c. A worker on an oil-rig, esp. a labourer on the floor of a rig.
1917Dialect Notes IV. 421 Roughneck, n. A man who works about an oil derrick. 1932Amer. Speech VII. 270 Roughneck, n., the regular term for a member of a driller's crew on a rotary rig; not applied to the driller. 1948Chicago Tribune 5 Dec. i. 14/3 Among today's roughnecks you'll find college men—petroleum engineers and geologists. 1958Times 15 May 14/6 Any such rig [for oil drilling] is known throughout the industry as a wildcat, and unskilled members of drilling crews are technically classified as ‘roughnecks’. 1972Guardian 11 Feb. 12/1 A Dutch oilman endorsed this. ‘When the exploration is over, the ‘roughnecks’ (local labour) will go.’ 1976M. Machlin Pipeline xi. 135 He..had worked as a Roughneck in the Louisiana area and in East Texas on the oil rigs. 1977Time 14 Mar. 37/1 The centre of the rig's activities is the mud-slicked drill floor, where half a dozen roughnecks struggle day and night with heavy chains and power-driven winches to shove 90-ft.-long pieces of drill pipe into the narrow hole.
2. attrib. Rough; rowdy; uncultivated; characteristic of a rough-neck.
1916H. L. Wilson Somewhere in Red Gap vii. 288 He really wanted..to study insect life and botany and geography and arithmetic,..instead of being killed off in a sudden manner by his rough-neck parent. 1920C. Sandburg Smoke & Steel 7 The others were rough-neck singers a long ways from home. 1931‘R. West’ in Time & Tide 19 Sept. 1091, I commend to every reader the essay on ‘Foreheads Villainous Low’, with its entertaining satire on the new ‘roughneck’ movement among the intellectuals. 1973A. Hunter Gently French xiv. 128 Those risks..would be part of the fun for a roughneck Romeo. 1976R. Sanders in D. Villiers Next Year in Jerusalem 209 The roughneck genius of a Walt Whitman.
So ˈrough-neck v. intr., to work as a rough-neck on an oil-rig; ˈrough-necking vbl. n.
1932Amer. Speech VII. 270 Roughneck, intr. v., to work as a member of a rotary driller's crew. 1976Globe & Mail (Toronto) 16 Feb. 3/1 About 200 a year are beginners ready to try roughnecking, the industry's term for the beginners' job. 1977New Yorker 6 June 47/2 One..roughnecked in the oil fields near Houston.
▸ attrib. Freq. in form ruffneck. Of or designating (a performer of) a type of ragga music which typically features a particularly fast rhythm, harsh vocals, and lyrics dealing with gun culture and crime.
1990Brian & Tony (Ram Dancehall) in rec.music.misc (Usenet Newsgroup) 7 Nov. Most of the Dancehall DJ's I know are into hardcore Roughneck tunes. 1993Evening Standard (Nexis) 14 Apr. 11 The mighty Sony Records have snapped up Ranks, Super Cat, Tiger and Mad Cobra in advance of what they hope is an international slide towards the ruffneck rhythms of Kingston Jamaica. 2000D. Adebayo My Once upon a Time (2001) iv. 78 Calls himself a bona fide singer now, DJ no longer. Had to, really. There was all these young ruffneck artists coming up badder than him. 2004Time Out 25 Aug. 108/3 Once they made terrifying, roughneck jungle, now Spring Heel Jack make terrifying, roughneck free improv. |