coolie
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈkuːli/
rhymes: -uːli
Forms: form: coolies
form: coolee
form: cooly
form: kuli
form: quli
form: koelie
Etymology: From Hindustani क़ुली / قلی (qulī, “hired laborer”), possibly from Ottoman Turkish قول (kul, “servant”). Another theory says that it is named after Gujarati કોળી (koḷī), a Gujarati tribe or caste. Other forms occur in Bengali কুলি (kuli) and Tamil கூலி (kūli, “daily hire”). Possibly also influenced by Hindustani کولی (kolī) / कोली (kolī, “weaver; low-class”). In Kurdish Koile (کۆیلە) and Quli (قولى): Slave, Servant. Kawli (Keweli): Low-Class, Gypsy.
Mandarin 苦力 (kǔlì, “hard labor”) may have been influenced by cognates of the above Hindi word in other languages and may have further influenced English.
Senses: examples: text: One day when the Man's Wife and the Tertium Quid had just arrived in the Cemetery, they saw some coolies breaking ground.
ref: 1889, Rudyard Kipling, “At the Pit's Mouth”, in Under the Deodars, Boston: The Greenock Press, published 1899, page 52:
text: 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.
ref: 1913, Elizabeth Kimball Kendall, A Wayfarer in China:
text: Outside, beyond the sun-baked station yard, a rice mill chugged away in the distance, and sweating coolies unloaded bags of rice from creaking bullock carts.
ref: 1943 November and December, G. T. Porter, “The Lines Behind the Lines in Burma”, in Railway Magazine, page 325:
text: 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.
ref: 1992, Jan Breman, E. Valentine Daniel, “Conclusion: The Making of a Coolie”, in E. Valentine Daniel, Henry Bernstein, Tom Brass, editors, Plantations, Proletarians, and Peasants in Colonial Asia, Frank Cass & Co., page 268:
text: 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.
ref: 2008, Lisa Yun, The Coolie Speaks: Chinese Indentured Laborers and African Slaves in Cuba, Temple University Press, page xix:
glosses: 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.
examples: text: Well, he and his troops had shown the koefietjies-the little coolies-how quickly and how easily Afrikaner explosive shells could knock it down.
ref: 1991, Larry Bond, Patrick Larkin, Vortex, page 56:
text: Even a coolie would have been better.
ref: 2014, Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings, Oneworld Publications (2015), page 199:
qualifier: South Africa and other parts of Africa
glosses: An Indian or a person of Indian descent.
Derived terms: Coolie Christmas
coolie hat
coolieism
coolie orange
coolitude
Related terms: koolie