: having the characteristics of or suitable for a roughneck
Synonyms
Examples of roughneck in a Sentence
Noun
a town overrun by roughnecks
a group of roughnecks like to hang out at the roadhouse and harass people
Adjective
their roughneck antics were amusing only if you were as drunk as they were
Recent Examples on the Web
Rachel Monroe, The New Yorker, 18 Sep. 2023
Hanna’s immediate suspicions may resonate with one viewer, while another, like Liv, might want to give the roughnecks the benefit of the doubt.
—Miles Klee, Rolling Stone, 2 Oct. 2023
Over the past five years, Texas has added 2,800 jobs to support wind and solar power generation at the same time that the state has lost 44,000 oil and gas extraction jobs, in part because automation has allowed producers to drill more wells while employing fewer roughnecks.
—Heather Souvaine Horn, The New Republic, 12 May 2023
Armageddon—the 1998 movie, not the mythical battlefield—told the story of an asteroid headed straight for Earth, and a bunch of swaggering roughnecks sent in space shuttles to blow it up with a nuclear weapon.
—IEEE Spectrum, 23 Sep. 2022
Robert Bea, a UC Berkeley professor emeritus of engineering and project management and systems, worked for years in the offshore oil industry, first as a roughneck on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico for Shell Oil and ultimately as director of Shell Oil’s offshore design group in New Orleans.
—Los Angeles Times, 5 Oct. 2021
Does a roughneck working on an oil rig need to be instructed to wear steel-toe boots?
—WSJ, 7 Mar. 2023
It’s set in Granite City, an everyday dystopia where Stallone lugs his body around with a reluctant roughneck shamble.
—Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 25 Aug. 2022
The family so epitomized the region’s hardscrabble ethos that Pipkin’s great-aunt, a folk-singing roughneck named Myra, is purported to be the inspiration for John Steinbeck’s Ma Joad.
—Grayson Haver Currin, Outside Online, 22 Dec. 2022
Robert Gebeloff, New York Times, 13 Nov. 2023
Overwatch’s latest short focused on McCree, the game’s popular, roughneck cowboy character.
—Julia Alexander, The Verge, 2 Nov. 2018
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Noun
The youth culture in evidence in his early novels is distinctly Texan and rural (and white): Cadillacs and roughnecks, Hank Williams songs on the jukebox at the pool hall, aimless drives down empty streets.
—Rachel Monroe, The New Yorker, 18 Sep. 2023
Hanna’s immediate suspicions may resonate with one viewer, while another, like Liv, might want to give the roughnecks the benefit of the doubt.
—Miles Klee, Rolling Stone, 2 Oct. 2023
Over the past five years, Texas has added 2,800 jobs to support wind and solar power generation at the same time that the state has lost 44,000 oil and gas extraction jobs, in part because automation has allowed producers to drill more wells while employing fewer roughnecks.
—Heather Souvaine Horn, The New Republic, 12 May 2023
Armageddon—the 1998 movie, not the mythical battlefield—told the story of an asteroid headed straight for Earth, and a bunch of swaggering roughnecks sent in space shuttles to blow it up with a nuclear weapon.
—IEEE Spectrum, 23 Sep. 2022
Robert Bea, a UC Berkeley professor emeritus of engineering and project management and systems, worked for years in the offshore oil industry, first as a roughneck on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico for Shell Oil and ultimately as director of Shell Oil’s offshore design group in New Orleans.
—Los Angeles Times, 5 Oct. 2021
Does a roughneck working on an oil rig need to be instructed to wear steel-toe boots?
—WSJ, 7 Mar. 2023
It’s set in Granite City, an everyday dystopia where Stallone lugs his body around with a reluctant roughneck shamble.
—Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 25 Aug. 2022
The family so epitomized the region’s hardscrabble ethos that Pipkin’s great-aunt, a folk-singing roughneck named Myra, is purported to be the inspiration for John Steinbeck’s Ma Joad.
—Grayson Haver Currin, Outside Online, 22 Dec. 2022
Adjective
In reporting trips over miles and miles of Texas, to borrow a phrase from a classic song, The Times found a broad range of Texans, settling in a few representative places — a North Texas suburb, the roughneck hub of Odessa and the heart of Houston — to tell the story of a state in rapid transition.
—Robert Gebeloff, New York Times, 13 Nov. 2023
Overwatch’s latest short focused on McCree, the game’s popular, roughneck cowboy character.
—Julia Alexander, The Verge, 2 Nov. 2018
See More
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'roughneck.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
Dictionary Entries Near roughneck
Cite this Entry
“Roughneck.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/roughneck. Accessed 6 Dec. 2023.
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Kids Definition
roughneck
noun
rough·neck
ˈrəf-ˌnek
1
: a rough person : rowdy
2
: a worker on a crew drilling oil wells
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