navvy

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.

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

Nevertheless, Author Mason can keep a story rolling like a navvy with a barrel, and that one perilous, amazing skill makes it hard to ignore what's happening.

From Time Magazine Archive

Now I maintain that papa's in the wrong about the navvy, and that the ritualist clergyman had no reason to be so utterly disconcerted, as papa declares he was, at this naïve answer.

From The Galaxy, June 1877 Vol. XXIII.—June, 1877.—No. 6. by Various