Thesaurus.com
Dictionary.com
Definitions

navvy

[nav-ee] / ˈnæv i /


Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

The effect wasn’t androgynous so much as deeply disconcerting: Priest was, in writer Julie Burchill’s memorable assessment, “built like a hod-carrier” and looked “like a navvy who’d stolen all your makeup”.

From The Guardian Jun. 5, 2020

They were known as the East London Group, and among their ranks were humble office clerks, a navvy, a window cleaner, a shop assistant, a printer, a basket-weaver and an errand boy.

From BBC Sep. 23, 2017

He is also likened to a navvy, a sweep, a stiff Dutch doll, and an immense feather mattress.

From The Guardian Aug. 24, 2012

He once said, and allowed no secret to be made of it, that he would "rather talk to an intelligent navvy than to a dull duke."

From Time Magazine Archive

A navvy could have given him points in daintiness.

From The Shadow of the Past by F.E. Mills Young

They helped build the C&O Canal and worked as navvies, or laborers, in its port.

From Washington Post Mar. 4, 2020

Prof Rotherham said it may have originally arrived with Welsh "navvies digging out the cuttings for the canal systems".

From BBC Sep. 1, 2018

To build the Paris-Rouen-Le Havre line in 1841-7, they “imported” not only an engineer, but also thousands of British navvies, miners, bricklayers and mechanics.

From Time Oct. 26, 2016

And Dan gave us a great segment about the thousands of navvies who worked like beasts and lived in mud huts.

From The Guardian Jan. 19, 2013

Four hundred navvies were at once set to work to form a dam of many thousands of sacks filled with earth. 

From Norfolk Annals A Chronological Record of Remarkable Events in the Nineteeth Century, Vol. 2 by Charles Mackie




Vocabulary.com logo
by dictionary.com

Join 12,000,000 vocabulary learners

Start learning new words today on VocabTrainer.
You'll remember them forever.

Start training