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Any Answers? (Slang Terms For Tradesmen)

Nemo

Go away, leave me alone, nemo is home
Joined
May 10, 2006
Messages
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In the UK
Bricklayers are known as Brickies.
Carpenters are known as Chippies (not to be confused with Chip Shops).
Electrians are known as Sparkies.

So what are:-
Roofers, Gas Fitters & Plumbers known as?. 'Cos I haven't a clue.
 
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I don’t know of any collective used in a similar way for any of those trades. Pipe fitters and plumbers were often referred to as pipe stranglers but that is a phrase you rarely hear on site these days, similarly a plasterer would once have been “Spread”, but again that seems consigned to history as well.

A pipe fitter once told me in a very superior way the difference between a fitter and a plumber. “A fitter puts his arse where a plumber puts his hand.”
 
I don't recall any name for plumbers when I started on sites in the 70s, one plumber was generally referred to as Plumb, as in 'oy plumb'.

I remember reading in a trade magazine once of a plumber working in the home of a rather pompous retired engineer. He told the plumber that engineers have to work to parameters of thousands of an inch and the plumber replied 'that would be no good for us, we have to be precise'
 
I don't recall any name for plumbers when I started on sites in the 70s, one plumber was generally referred to as Plumb, as in 'oy plumb'.

I remember reading in a trade magazine once of a plumber working in the home of a rather pompous retired engineer. He told the plumber that engineers have to work to parameters of thousands of an inch and the plumber replied 'that would be no good for us, we have to be precise'
What annoys me is when they send a guy around to fix, say for eg, the door on your fridge (because even though it's only a few weeks old it's already fallen off) and they call the guy 'an engineer'.
 
When I worked for a freight company, any truck driver was called 'drive'.

It is common to request a member of staff in an otherwise apparently unstaffed retail establishment or pub by calling out 'SHOP!'

The common pejorative term for travellers being 'pikey' comes from the times when the construction workers that worked on the roads were employed to also work on canal construction.
The roads were known as 'turnpikes' as they had originally been toll roads with their access barred by a pole or 'pikestaff' across the entrance.
Hence the need to pay the toll to 'turn the pike'.
 
Electrians are known as Sparkies.
Electricians.

But anyways, by the same token, we should call Dentists 'toothies', Barbers 'hairies' and Dendrochronologists 'ringies'.

The people that used to work as bus conductors were called 'clippies' as they used to use a device to clip a bit out of your ticket to validate it.

It would appear that the nominative form for creating a snappy pseudonym would be to think of the product or material being worked with and then adding '...ies' to the end of it.
This escaped with our antipodean convict transports and became common usage for any item - dunnies, tinnies, barbies etc.
 
What annoys me is when they send a guy around to fix, say for eg, the door on your fridge (because even though it's only a few weeks old it's already fallen off) and they call the guy 'an engineer'.
Well quite. I leave this word out of my job title, outside of work, otherwise people think I 'do something with computers' and like my new neighbour, immediately got a lathe out to 'see if I could fix it' (Inside voice “No, feck off you patronising git.” Outside voice “Not really my field, sorry.”).

I generally find that quoting my hourly rate for all and any subcontract works does the trick - I've quoted this for gardening, fixing someone else's car, electrical work, fixing computers, configuring phones, you name it. Generally after the...

"Why would I pay that?"
"Because that's what I earn in my day-job."

...conversation, I don't get asked again. Which is fine.

Yes it's annoying. Luckily I’m not bitter about it... :)
 
When I worked for a freight company, any truck driver was called 'drive'.

It is common to request a member of staff in an otherwise apparently unstaffed retail establishment or pub by calling out 'SHOP!'

The common pejorative term for travellers being 'pikey' comes from the times when the construction workers that worked on the roads were employed to also work on canal construction.
The roads were known as 'turnpikes' as they had originally been toll roads with their access barred by a pole or 'pikestaff' across the entrance.
Hence the need to pay the toll to 'turn the pike'.
Well done Trev. Always wondered where the term came from, and now I know.

It's a derogatory phrase these days of course, but when once explained it's not derogatory at all.
 
the construction workers that worked on the roads were employed to also work on canal construction.
Just to add a minor relevant reference;
The people that did the digging on canals had to try to stick to one level for as long as possible to ensure the water level stayed constant in the canal, so they would follow a 'contour map' drawn out by the designers and engineers.
Hence, as they worked their way across country they would be 'navigating' by the map to get to their destination. Which is where the term 'navvies' comes from to describe men doing the physical work of digging excavations etc.
 
Just to add a minor relevant reference;
The people that did the digging on canals had to try to stick to one level for as long as possible to ensure the water level stayed constant in the canal, so they would follow a 'contour map' drawn out by the designers and engineers.
Hence, as they worked their way across country they would be 'navigating' by the map to get to their destination. Which is where the term 'navvies' comes from to describe men doing the physical work of digging excavations etc.

That doesn't sound right to me. River works were called 'navigations' before the Industrial Revolution and term carried over into the canal age. The labourers who built the canals were called variously cutters, bankers, and from the 1770s, navigators. This is from Hadfield's British Canals.
The OED (also quoted by Hadfield) doesn't list the abbreviated version 'navvy' until the 1830s.
 
Rivers formed naturally so were navigations, tis true, and the various jobs for cutting canals did indeed have separate classifications, but the 'group' name, if you will, was 'navigators', as per the 1770s. I very much doubt the veracity of the claim that;
"The OED (...) doesn't list the abbreviated version 'navvy' until the 1830s."
because as far as I'm aware the OED did not even exist until publication (in parts) began in the 1880s.
Other dictionaries did exist before the OED but they were considered to be inaccurate and incomplete.
 
Rivers formed naturally so were navigations, tis true, and the various jobs for cutting canals did indeed have separate classifications, but the 'group' name, if you will, was 'navigators', as per the 1770s. I very much doubt the veracity of the claim that;
"The OED (...) doesn't list the abbreviated version 'navvy' until the 1830s."
because as far as I'm aware the OED did not even exist until publication (in parts) began in the 1880s.
Other dictionaries did exist before the OED but they were considered to be inaccurate and incomplete.

I checked the reference and first citation of navvy is 1832. First citation of navigator meaning a labourer is 1775.
The OED set out to 'tell the history' of each word and so an aim from the beginning was to find first and early usages. But like other dictionaries, it wasn't -and isn't- complete so although they don't list the words earlier, that doesn't mean they weren't in use earlier!

So I probably shouldn't have given the info on the history of the terms as it didn't help prove or disprove the case. But I found it interesting that navvy appeared so late.

'Navigations' before the 'age of canals' were mainly or at least often, improvements to rivers - such as weirs, locks, and new cuts to improve water flow and deepen the navigable channel.
 
Dictionaries describe how words are used rather than prescribing what they mean. Meanings change, and the origin of a word is often only loosely related to its current meaning.

Navvies: "Navigate" comes from latin navigare meaning to travel in a ship.

In due course, this developed a wider meaning of travelling by water, and then it developed to mean any stretch of water that was suitable for, or modified for, travel by boat. Today, in the UK, a river licence for a boat covers those parts of the river that are designated a "navigation" and theoretically you are not meant to stray off those parts of the river into backwaters and side streams.

In the sense of stretch of water suitable for a boat to travel on the word navigation was used for canals designed for this purpose. The word canal just means "channel" and might equally be used for an artificial channel used for drainage or irrigation.

So when people were working on the new navigations (i.e. digging/building canals for transport purposes) they were referred to as navigators and then as navvies — just as a person who planes wood for a living is a chippy and someone who deals with electricity is a sparky.

I really don't think it's any more complicated than that. Certainly the illiterate, rough and ready labourers who were called navvies were not the people who were doing the complex survey work and navigation to ensure that the new canal followed the contours.

The use of navigate to refer to finding one's way around by land using a map and compass is more recent. Navi... is specifically linked to navis (ship) and navigare (travel by ship) and the English word navy.

Pikey: This is now generally regarded as an offensive term for travellers and not one that I would use except in a discussion about the origin of the word itself. @Trevp666 gave a good explanation of what a turnpike was: a toll road protected by a barrier. Pike means spike and is linked to words like peak, pickaxe, and German pickelhaube (a spiked hat). I have read that the turn pike was a spiked barrier rather than a simple pikestaff.

I read many years ago that pikey was derived from turnpike sailor. On this analogy, the traveller or gypsy (not the same thing*) was likened to a sailor because they were away travelling for most of the time and would return or pass through from time to time, and the sailor was a fanciful reference to the canvas covers on their wagons.

I am sceptical about this. It sounds like an imaginative folk etymology. A far simpler explanation is that people who lived and travelled on the turnpike or pike (road) were called pikeys.

*Gypsies/travellers: Two different groups, linked in the popular imagination y the fact that they both traditionally lead a semi-nomadic lifestyle. Gypsies are Romani/Romany people, but the Irish Travellers are a genetically and culturally distinct Irish group believed to have diverged from the settled community around the time of Cromwell, or possibly earlier. Gypsy is also often seen as an offensive term, but the situation is made more complex when Tyson Fury (of Irish traveller stock) refers to himself as "the Gypsy King".
 
While working in aircraft maintenance, there where three primary disciplines: mechanics, electricians and sheet metal workers.

They were respectively: spanners, sparks and tin bashers, or just bashers. There were also painters, but exposure to chemicals generally meant they were unintelligible, so painters was enough.
 
What annoys me is when they send a guy around to fix, say for eg, the door on your fridge (because even though it's only a few weeks old it's already fallen off) and they call the guy 'an engineer'.
I think that is the same as everyone being an 'executive' or manager. Once you would go into a car showroom and meet a car salesman/woman - now the are all 'sales executives'. And don't get me started on multi-trades....
 
Dictionaries describe how words are used rather than prescribing what they mean. Meanings change, and the origin of a word is often only loosely related to its current meaning.

... So when people were working on the new navigations (i.e. digging/building canals for transport purposes) they were referred to as navigators ...I really don't think it's any more complicated than that. Certainly the illiterate, rough and ready labourers who were called navvies were not the people who were doing the complex survey work and navigation to ensure that the new canal followed the contours.

Totally agree. It's interesting that navigator became the word for canal-building labourer rather than for men who worked the boats, but hey that's Language for you.

Pikey: A far simpler explanation is that people who lived and travelled on the turnpike or pike (road) were called pikeys.

Agreed. Some earlier usages of Pikey/Piker in the OED have it meaning tramp or itinerant not a specific group such as Gypsies.
 
Firemen are Smokies, are they not?

I know it's supposed to be slightly dismissive (of their mental acuity), but I find 'Plod' as a name for the police to be slightly affectionate (especially as many other such nicknames are offensively hostile).
 
I'm fond of the term 'the Bizzies' (police around Merseyside, who always seem to be kept busy)
 
What the US call "A bear in the air" is what we call "A copper chopper"
 
I know it's supposed to be slightly dismissive (of their mental acuity), but I find 'Plod' as a name for the police to be slightly affectionate (especially as many other such nicknames are offensively hostile).
And 'Rozzers' as well. Lots of theories as to where it came from of course.
 
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