Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a private soldier.

1859, 1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1873		Sl. Dict.

2. (Aus./US) an immigrant Chinese labourer.

1850		Taunton Courier 6 Feb. 2/4: These suggestions comprised [...] the experiment of Chinese Coolie servants [to New South Wales].
1854		Soulé, Gihon & Nisbet Annals of S.F. 381: He stigmatized the Chinese as ‘coolies,’ (an appellation which they professed to abhor).
1872		‘Mark Twain’ Innocents at Home 394: If the government sells a gang of Coolies to a foreigner [...] it is specified that their bodies shall be restored to China in case of death.
1888		Chicago Trib. 5 Aug. 17/2: A gentleman [had ] a cooly man-of-work. ‘One good Chinaman,’ declared this man, ‘is easily worth three girls’.
1899–1900		C.L. Cullen Tales of the Ex-Tanks 257: I’ve got one of the biggest coffee plantations in the Hawaiian Islands [...] I run 300 to 500 coolies.

3. (Aus./S.Afr.) a derog. term for an Indian; thus Coolieland, India.

[1781		Hicky’s Bengal Gaz. 22-29 Sept. n.p.: Moors and gentoos (cheifly [sic] Cooleys, and poor people)].
1846		Bell’s Life in Sydney 5 Dec. 2/6: Mr Wentworth stated that [...] the whole of the Coolies in his employment were notrious drunkards.
1846		Bell’s Life in Sydney 19 Dec. 3/1: Hassan Alley [...] a native of Coolieland.
1858		in Trinidad Sentinel 8 Apr. n.p.: Portugue all da keep shap – Coolie no fit, nomo fou weed grass.
1878		N.O. Democrat (LA) 1 Nov. 1/5: Two Sikh constables, a Chinese districty watchman and a shoop coolie were injured.
1894		Truth (Sydney) 7 Oct. 1/8: The steamships Clitus, Bucephalus, New Guinea [...] are manned by Coolies.
1900		Punch 21 Mar. 199/3: ‘The pithead gear of the Elandslaagte Colliery,’ we read in the Times, Mar. 14, ‘was fired by the retreating Boers, but the coolies extinguished the fire,’ &c. The ‘coolies’ is an appropriate name, and this particular body of ‘coolies’ should henceforth be known as ‘the Extinguishers’.
1902		Bulletin (Sydney) 2 Aug. 17/4: Look here, [...] don’t you bother about Mahomed Khan. He’s not half the rider that I am. True, he has a following of low-caste coolies who believe in him, but if you are dealing with the very aristocracy of horsemanship just you come to me!
1908		Tensas Gaz. (St Joseph, LA) 17 Apr. 6/1: A large covered chair held by three coolies was carried up the path.
1913		C. Pettman Africanderisms 368: A threepenny piece is so called by the Natal natives and Coolies.
1915		E. Poole Harbor (1919) 320: The sun, and it shone upon [...] eleven races of men, upon Italians [...] on Negroes and Norwegians, Lascars, Malays, Coolies.
1919		C.H. Thorp Handful of Ausseys 23: He is a philosopher, this coolie, and stolidly withdraws from the somewhat unequal fray.
1926		E. Walrond Tropic Death (1972) 128: Chinks pauperized in the Georgetown fire of ’05 and Calcutta coolies mixing rotie at dusk.
1928		C. McKay Home to Harlem 3: You ain’t like them dirty jabbering coolies [Arabs].
1937		E. Mittelholzer Creole Chips 22: ‘Na-a-asty coolie,’ she added.
1946		S. Jackson Indiscreet Guide to Soho 51: Millions of sheets of music are churned out by the presses until the errand boy in Lewisham and coolie in Lahore have whistled it.
1954		(con. 1940s) T.A.G. Hungerford Sowers of the Wind 171: Here you’ll do as you’re told, and it won’t include getting familiar with these bloody coolies.
1954		Wodehouse Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit 17: Like a Bengal tiger snarling over its breakfast coolie.
1959		E. Mphahlele Down Second Avenue 109: If hum coolie ju kaffir ten-times ju-self.
1960		C. Hooper Brief Authority 254: Don’t lie to us, coolie!
1973		M. Shezi Shanti in Kavanagh S. Afr. People’s Plays (1981) 74: After liquor again? Search this house. This must be a shebeen. I don’t remember seeing a Bantu visiting a Coolie.
1975		S. Roberts ‘And Never Come Back Again’ Outside Life’s Feast 13: Coolies were very low too. Dad said that a coolie was no use whatever to a country. They sent all their money back to India.
1977		C. Hope Ducktails in Gray Theatre Two (1981) 39: I had to beat the koeli down.
1982		E.P. Herald (S. Afr.) 6 Dec. 🌐 It did not occur to the producer that the offensive word ‘koelie’ would cause shock and dismay to indian viewers.
1989		J. Hobbs Thoughts in a Makeshift Mortuary 21: It’s a waste of money to send washing out to the coolies.
1990		J. Naidoo Coolie Location 47: More than once I was carelessly called ‘Sam’ or Coolie or Charra.
1999		Guardian Rev. 28 Aug. 11: Where lies the difference today? In that we no longer use the word ‘coolies’?
2014		Observer 26 Jan. 44/5: One man [...] told us to stay at the door as his dog was trained to go for ‘coolies’.

4. (Aus./S.Afr.) a derog. term for a black person.

1887		Bulletin (Sydney) 22 Oct. 8/4: And ‘wasn’t he the particular boojum who was going to make this a white man’s country, and no more darned coolies?’.
1908		Parliamentary Debates (Aus.) 7869: Let the honorable senator tell us something about his Fiji coolie.
1946		S. Jackson Indiscreet Guide to Soho 38: The four of them [...] work like coolies and the place is always jammed.
1975		J. McClure Snake 177: Aikona, he couldn’t have had time to grab even the small change [...] before the coolie looked out of the kitchen.
1999		IOL News (Western Cape) 27 Oct. 🌐 The list of prohibited words has been narrowed down to ‘kaffir’, ‘kaffirmeid’, ‘coolie’, ‘hotnot’ and their variations.
2000		Guardian Editor 28 Jan. 7: The laws on racial and sexual discrimination include a ban on the words ‘kaffir’ and ‘coolie’.

5. (US, also coolie-man) any East Asian.

1866		W. Reid After the War 417: We can drive the niggers out and import coolies that will work better, at less expense, and relieve us from this cursed nigger impudence.
1876		Louisiana Democrat (Alexandria, LA) 30 Aug. 1/4: We denounce [...] the revival of the coolie trade in Mongolian women importted for immoral purposes and Mongolian men hired to perform servile labour.
1901		Kalispell Bee (MT) 28 Mar. 3/2: Applications have been made by several Jap herders to secure employment [...] at the starvation pay of $10 per month [...] we have yet to learn of anyone accepting the coolie labour.
1903		J. Conrad Typhoon 153: The Chinamen! Why don’t you speak plainly? Couldn’t tell what you meant. Never heard a lot of coolies spoken of as passengers before.
1917		Boy’s Own Paper XL 2 104: The night was as black as a coolie’s heart.
1927		Malay Mail in Lawlor Murder on the Verandah (1999) 186: [headline] Coolies Flogged to Death.
1933		(con. 1852) H. Asbury Barbary Coast 145: The persecution of the Chinese in California acquired an official tinge in 1852, when Governor Bigler [...] sent a message to the Legislature in which he characterized the Chinese as ‘coolies’.
1940		J. MacLaren-Ross ‘A Bit of a Smash in Madras’ in Memoirs of the Forties (1984) 272: There were these coolies pretty badly smashed about.
1957		H. Simmons Corner Boy 105: Nigger! Boot, spook, kike, wop, coolie, greaseball, [...] you name ’em!
1957		S. Selvon Ways of Sunlight 84: What you doing here, coolie? Your area is down South.
1960		(con. 1950) R. Leckie March to Glory (1962) 61: Stupid, ain’t they? [...] Just a bunch of backward coolies.
1999		J. Stahl Perv (2001) 96: No God would make a child chop her tresses and wear her hair like some kind of coolie.

6. (W.I., Jam.) an East Indian.

1942		L. Bennett ‘De Flu’ in Jam. Dialect Poems 31: Coolie, chiney, nayga, jew [...] Everybody got de flu!
1992		V. Headley Yardie 101: She was a coolie as people of Indian ancestry are called in Jamaica.