Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One employed in the moving or shoveling of coal, in loading or discharging coal-ships, in shoveling coal from the coal-bunkers of a steam-vessel to the furnaces, etc.; a coal-passer.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The Bishop, black as a coal-heaver, in a workingman's cheap cotton shirt

    Chapter 12: The Bishop 2010

  • On my word, I believe I must be troublesome to your butler for a draught of something — I am as thirsty as a coal-heaver that is working by the piece.

    Saint Ronan's Well 2008

  • Jack had been a bobbin boy in a jute mill, also a cannery worker, and a coal-heaver in a power plant, in grammar school days.

    Wolf House Burning: Page I 2004

  • “My wish is that my husband — should I ever have one — should work, not exactly as a coal-heaver.”

    Phineas Finn 2004

  • Confusedly Maury saw eyes in the milk train staring curiously up at him, heard Gloria and Anthony in quick controversy as to whether he should go to the city with her, then another clamor and she was gone and the three men, pale as ghosts, were standing alone upon the platform while a grimy coal-heaver went down the road on top of a motor truck, carolling hoarsely at the summer morning.

    The Beautiful and Damned 2003

  • A coal-heaver, tired from a night of toil, wanders up through the docks with his shovel across his shoulder; he is black, weary, and athirst; he is going home.

    Shallow Soil 2003

  • The coal-heaver continues his walk with a heavy, long stride.

    Shallow Soil 2003

  • ‘A wonderful woman, sir; paid a visit to Melbourne, and there, sir, seated at the back of the pit between a coal-heaver and an apple-woman, she copied the whole thing down.’

    Madame Midas 2003

  • He was a huge Scotsman, tall as a giant, broad shouldered and muscled like a coal-heaver.

    Sharpe's Tiger Cornwell, Bernard 1997

  • The difference between a filthy story told by a coal-heaver and a filthy story told by an artist is only the difference between expert pornography and inexpert pornography, when, as is often the case, the effect sought is the same.

    Unprintable 1969

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