Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (orig. US) a thug, a hoodlum, a fighter.

1836		D. Crockett Exploits and Adventures 58: You may be called a drunken dog by some of the clean shirt and silk stocking gentry, but the real rough necks will style you a jovial fellow.
1906		Sun (NY) 9 Sept. 1/3: You can figure on the horny mitts and the rough necks having $4 [...] in their kicks.
1912		Ade Knocking the Neighbors 130: I find [...] a large Rough-neck in a Sweater who has come to shut off the Gas.
1919		Wodehouse ‘Rallying Round Old George’ in My Man Jeeves [ebook] [S]ome rough-neck [...] had laid for him and slugged him with considerable vim.
1928		M.C. Sharpe Chicago May (1929) 234: Roughneck, that he was, I’ll bet he never heard such a choice vocabulary since he came downstairs.
1939		Rover 18 Feb. 23: The roughnecks levered and heaved.
1944		J.T. Farrell ‘Autumn Afternoon’ in To Whom It May Concern 141: All you ever do is start fights and make trouble. You’re a worthless roughneck.
1948		(con. 1944) N. Mailer Naked and Dead 548: You’re not such a roughneck.
1955		B. Schulberg On the Waterfront (1964) 78: A roughneck at heart, but a shrewd, strong-minded, dedicated one.
1967		(con. 1940s) M. Dibner Admiral (1968) 47: You were a lousy little roughneck sniping butts on Baltimore’s south side.
1969		P. Theroux Murder in Mount Holly (1999) 36: All the rough-necks and shit-heads.
1970		T. Parker Frying-Pan 74: Attitudes which might go down well with the [...] roughnecks and beatniks among the younger prisoners.
1973		Battling Battalino in Heller In This Corner (1974) 138: I was one of those roughnecks and they put me out of school.
1982		G.V. Higgins Patriot Game (1985) 47: Would you bring in an ashtray for this roughneck visiting us?
1990		(con. early 1950s) J. Ellroy L.A. Confidential 58: Prisoners would be there to ID the roughnecks.
2000		P. Beatty Tuff 33: She wondered what her friends would say when she showed up at the club with a big-boned roughneck.
2005		(con. c.1945) A. Wheatle Island Songs (2006) 64: Dem affe sen’ in police an’ roughneck to mek people go back ah work.
2006		P. Shannon Davey Darling 163: He’s always been a bit of a roughneck, I s’pose.
2015		P. Beatty Sellout (2016) 183: That black stretch Cadillac — crammed from mini bar to back window with roughnecks [...] held Stevie’s boys.
2016		A. Wheatle Crongton Knights 115: ‘There’s too many roughnecks around here’.
2022		I. Fitzgerald Dirtbag, Massachusetts 175: A beautiful city [...] that has a long history of attracting roughnecks.

2. (US) an unmannered, informal person.

1899–1900		C.L. Cullen Tales of the Ex-Tanks 352: The roughneck behind the bar gave me the polaric gaze.
1909		Salt lake Herald Repub. (UT) 19 Dec. 52/1: [cartoon character] ‘Reggie Roughneck’.
1912		Van Loan ‘Little Sunset’ in Ten-Thousand-Dollar Arm 98: You big rough-neck [...] We need you!
1915		Daily Trib. (Bismarck, ND) 28 Apr. 7/2: At the end, however, he offered this: ‘The majority of people, after all, who do use slang, are lowbrows and roughnecks.’.
1925		F.S. Fitzgerald Great Gatsby 59: I’m Gatsby, he said [...] I was looking at an elegant young roughneck.
1937		‘Boxcar Bertha’ Sister of the Road (1975) 30: I’ve always been a rough-neck. I never had any morals, nor did I ever teach you any.
1942		Hartlepool Mail 14 Aug. 2/3: The R.A.F. has developed a language all its own. [...] ‘Roughneck’ [...] does not mean a tough guy but an unlikeable person.
1973		M. Harris Angry Eye 103: Dear Your ‘Royal Highness’: one of your humblest liege subjects [...] a roughneck.

3. (also roughie) a labourer, usu. on an oil rig.

1913		H.A. Franck Zone Policeman 88 86: A ‘rough-neck,’ [...] is a bull-necked, whole-hearted, hard-headed, cast-iron fellow who can ride the beam of a snorting, rock-tearing steam-shovel all day, wrestle the night through with various starred Hennessey and its rivals, and continue that round indefinitely without once failing to turn up to straddle his beam in the morning.
1917		DN IV 421: Roughneck, n. A man who works about an oil derrick.
1932		F. Pond ‘Lang. of Calif. Oil Fields’ AS VII:4 270: Roughneck, n., the regular term for a member of a driller’s crew on a rotary rig; not applied to the driller.
1948		Chicago Trib. 5 Dec. I 14/3: Among today’s roughnecks you’ll find college men — petroleum engineers and geologists [DA].
1967		N. Mailer Why Are We in Vietnam? (1970) 15: You might think my language was the proper vocabulary for a roughneck or a driller.
1970		E. Thompson Garden of Sand (1981) 480: When the rig-builders left, the roughnecks moved in.
1972		N. Algren ‘The Last Carousel’ in Texas Stories (1995) 128: ‘I never saw anything like it!’ a roughneck in farmer’s jeans exclaimed beside me. [Ibid.] 129: ‘The man is an animal,’ the roughie whispered to me confidentially.

4. (W.I.) a dancehall enthusiast.

1995

Francis-Jackson Official Dancehall Dict. 44: Rough-neck ragamuffin.