navvy

• He laboured each day with pick and shovel with the energy of a hero and the dogged perseverance of a navvy, and each night he went to Lantry's store to increase his gains by gambling. —  Twice Bought
• After trying his hand at a variety of trades there, he went to Scotland about 1817 as a navvy, and in 1827 was living in a lodging-house in Edinburgh kept by William Hare, another Irish labourer. —  Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 "Bulgaria" to "Calgary"
• Here Norton's Abyssinian tubes, sunk in the bed after it has been carefully worked by the steam-navvy for the rich alluvium underlying the surface, would act like pumps, and dams would form huge tanks. —  To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II A Personal Narrative
• Up at five in the morning and working about the place like a navvy till your back feels as if it 'ud break, and then back again in the afternoon. —  The Land of Promise
• Our medical officer, also, and the ready pickaxe of "Sanitary Tom" (as the boys called the navvy who was his stout ally), had been at work laying bare the subterranean geography of our premises and making all right. —  Uppingham by the Sea a Narrative of the Year at Borth

Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the Same Context