workien.
/ˈwəːki/, U.S. /ˈwərki/ colloquial.
1. U.S. Usually with capital initial. A member or supporter of the Working Men's Party, a short-lived political party of the early 19th cent. which advocated the interests of the working class. Chiefly in plural. Now historical.
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1830 N.-Y. Spectator 20 Apr. The Workies, as a great politician..calls the working men's party, were to have a meeting last evening.
1846 N.Y. Daily Tribune 2 Nov. On no other question were the Workies of this City ever so long and thoroughly united.
1935 Pennsylvania Mag. Hist. & Biogr. 59 382 The labor movement, then known as ‘The Workies’, which blindly was struggling for improved conditions.
1966 J. G. Rayback Hist. Amer. Labor (new ed.) vi. 69 One Worky, a carpenter named Ebenezer Ford, was elected to the assembly.
2005 P. Adams Bowery Boys iv. 69 The Workies awakened a class consciousness in the industrial laborer faced with decreasing wages.
2. More generally: a worker, esp. a manual labourer. Frequently Scottish in later use.
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society > occupation and work > worker > workers according to type of work > manual or industrial worker > [noun]
working manOE
workperson1807
workie1837
worker1848
blouse1865
yardie1893
working stiff1930
1837 Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. Apr. 560/1 Not that Mr Grote hates the aristocracy less, but that he dreads the workies more.
1883 Cent. Mag. Mar. 788/2 Take away this rest-day, and you..turn us into a nation of mere ‘workies’.
1907 Railroad Telegrapher Nov. 1825/2 We classified these locals as..workies.
1995 Daily Record (Glasgow) (Nexis) 29 May 30 A pot-bellied workie in a white hard hat shooed them back off.
2000 I. Pattison Stranger here Myself (2001) ix. 304 Two workies with shovels easing off the shored up dirt back into the hole.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2014; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
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n.1830