coolie
English
Alternative forms
Etymology
From Hindi क़ुली (qulī) and Urdu قلی (qulī, “hired laborer”), named after a Gujarati tribe or caste of that name. Other forms occur in Bengali কুলী (kuli) and Tamil கூலி (kūli, “daily hire”). Possibly also influenced by Hindi कोली (kolī, “weaver; low-class”).
The (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Mandarin word 苦力 (kǔlì), meaning "to exert one's abilities; heavy labour work" in Classical Chinese, may have been influenced by cognates of the above Hindi word in other languages and may have further influenced English.
Pronunciation
Noun
coolie (plural coolies)
- (offensive, slang) An unskilled Asian worker, usually of Chinese or Indian descent; a labourer; a porter. Coolies were frequently transported to other countries in the 19th and early 20th centuries as indentured labourers.
- 1913, Elizabeth Kimball Kendall, A Wayfarer in China,
- From Hui-li-chou northwards I was escorted by real soldiers, quite of the new service. They looked rather shipshape in khaki suits and puttees, and their guns were of a good model, but they handled them in careless fashion at first, belabouring laden ponies and even coolies who were slow in getting out of the way of my chair.
- 1992, Jan Breman, E. Valentine Daniel, Conclusion: The Maiking of a Coolie, E. Valentine Daniel, Henry Bernstein, Tom Brass (editors), Plantations, Proletarians, and Peasants in Colonial Asia, Frank Cass & Co., page 268,
- Coolie-identity is as much the product of self-perception as it is the construction of a category by those who did not belong to it. It is these constructions that historically constituted a coolie in the matrix of power relations which this essay seeks to partially comprehend.
- 2008, Lisa Yun, The Coolie Speaks: Chinese Indentured Laborers and African Slaves in Cuba, Temple University Press, page xix,
- Community histories did not necessarily feature the coolie, partly due to the fact that “coolie” is a classed term. Asian coolies were regarded as lowly laborers.
- 1913, Elizabeth Kimball Kendall, A Wayfarer in China,
- (offensive, slang, Trinidad and Tobago, Caribbean, Guyana, South Africa and other parts of Africa) An Indian or a person of Indian descent.
- 1991, Larry Bond and Patrick Larkin, Vortex[1], page 56:
- Well, he and his troops had shown the koefietjies-the little coolies-how quickly and how easily Afrikaner explosive shells could knock it down.
Derived terms
Translations
unskilled Asian worker
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References
- Yule, Henry and Burnell, A. C. (1886): Hobson-Jobson The Anglo-Indian Dictionary. Reprint: Ware, Hertfordshire. Wordsworth Editions Limited. 1996.
- Le grand dictionnaire Ricci de la langue chinoise, (2001), Vol. III, p. 833.
Categories:
- English terms derived from Hindi
- English terms derived from Urdu
- English 2-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
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- Rhymes:English/uːli
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English offensive terms
- English slang
- Trinidad and Tobago English
- Caribbean English
- Guyanese English
- South African English
- English terms with quotations
- Min Nan terms with non-redundant manual script codes
- Min Nan terms with redundant script codes
- en:People