coolie adj.
1. Indian.
![[SA]](/static/img/flags/sa.png "South Africa") | 18 Sept. Letters from the Cape (1875) 206: I asked the pert, active, cockney housemaid what I ought to pay them. [...] Her scorn was sublime. ‘Them nasty blacks never asks more than their regular charge.’ So I asked the black-lead demon, who demanded ‘two shillings each horse and waggon,’ and a dollar each ‘coolie man’. | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | S.F. Call 13 July n.p.: Getting the work of making soldiers’ uniforms away from teh [...] coolie operatives. | |
| Secret Service in S. Afr. 74: An Indian coolie woman entered. | |
| Capt. Billy’s Whiz Bang Mar. 51: The coolie waiter said you wanted me badly. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Capricornia (1939) 174: Look at them fine gentlemen the Hinjun Rajahs beside them dirty niggers the coolie Indoos. | |
| Riddle of the Veld 60: It was a pity to waste good money, even if it was only paper money and ‘coolie stuff’. | |
| Cold Stone Jug (1981) II 25: Not even a kaffir-woman. Or a coolie-woman. | |
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Late Emancipation of Jerry Stover (1982) 18: I’m an Indian, nothing but a coolie babu to your W.C. Kirby. | |
![[WI]](/static/img/flags/wi.png "West Indies") | Fireflies 220: Some Negro boys were idling in the shade [...] They rose when they saw the hearse and ran, jeering, out on to the track. ‘Coolie funeral!’ they shouted. |
2. (US) Chinese.
| Eve. Bulletin (Maysville, KY) 24 Aug. 2/1: The tax on cigars outght not to be repealed, because the people ought not to be forced to use inferior, ratshop, coolie, prison or filthy tenement house mad cigars. | |
| Waco Eve. News (TX) 20 Nov. 4/4: The proposal [...] being voted on by [...] the Cigarmakers Union is to omit from the label the words ‘opposed to inferior, rat-shop, coolie, prison or filthy tenement house workmanship’. | |
| Labor Jrnl (Everett, WA) 24 Nov. 5/4: A cigar manufacturer took on coolie labor. | |
 | Labor World 29 Nov. 4/4: The question arose how the consumer might discriminate between the union-made cigar and the ‘rat-shop’, filthy-made coolie product. |
3. (Aus./S.Afr.) a derog. term meaning black or pertaining to black people; thus coolie-boy, coolie-girl.
| Truth (Sydney) 11 Mar. 4/4: [used of underpaid white seamen] [headline] Coolie Crews. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 21 Nov. 12/3: The case [...] of the Lismore Hindoos who cremated a body there recently is merely the exception which proves the rule. I have witnessed several coolie burials in Australia, and the proceedings have been very simple in each case. | |
| ‘Trouble Is My Business’ in Spanish Blood (1946) 175: There’s plenty of coolie labor around town. | |
| Down These Mean Streets (1970) 189: After a few shifts I figured I better do something quick to get outta this coolie labour. | |
| Cape Town Coolie 55: Yes you, coolie boy! I’m – tawkingg! |
4. (W.I.) the trad. Jamaican epithet for East Indians; usu. in the form coolie-man or coolie-woman.
| Black Roadways 98: The most malignant duppies [are] ‘A Chinese or Coolie ghost’. | |
| ‘Fan Me Solja Man’ in Folk Songs of Jamaica 52: Sake a Coolie-man silver bangle, / Gal yuh character gawn. | |
| Quality of Violence (1978) 19: That is your Mr Shooksingh [...] Real coolie stunt he trying to pull on you. All coolie people behave like that. | |
| Smile Orange Act II: I love white people too ... black man, white man, coolie man, chiney man. | |
| (con. 1950s) Harder They Come 105: The ‘pilot’, an intense, thin East Indian, sat majestically behind the wheel [...] So this was the legendary ‘Coolie Man’. | |
| (con. 1981) East of Acre Lane 232: ‘He has ah liccle coolie ’pon his family side.’ ‘Yeah? He doesn’t look as if he has Indian in ’im.’. |
In compounds
the Islamic festival of Moharram or the Hindu festival of Diwali; thus derog. phr. done up like a coolie Christmas, vulgarly over-dressed.
| Graaff-Reinet Advertiser 2 May in Pettman Africanderisms 129: The Coolie Christmas celebration at Umgeni (Natal) last Monday ended in a serious riot. | |
| Secret Service 80: Within a month he either owned or had a line on [...] enough paraffin lamps to supply a coolie temple with illumination on the Coolie Christmas. | |
| Ratoons 74: Why are you done up like a coolie Christmas at this time of the day? | |
| Third World Quarterly XV 153: ‘Coolie christmas’ is Eid (explained under the oddly spelt ‘Id’ as ‘a Muslim body festival’ — a remarkable sneer). | |
| Thoughts in Makeshift Mortuary 346: He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt in loud stripes, maroon trousers, a mock leopard-skin belt... ‘Jake! You look like a —’ she stopped herself just in time from saying ‘coolie Christmas’ and said, ‘— Christmas tree’ [DSAE]. |
(W.I.) straight hair.
| Jamaica Patwah 🌐 ‘Mi buy di car from tha coolie hair man deh’. |
see coolie n.1 (5)
see Mary n. (1c)
(US drugs) inferior opium.
| Amer. Thes. Sl. | |
| Criminal Sl. (rev. edn). | |
| Narcotics Lingo and Lore. |
shocking pink, seen as vulgar and ‘typically Indian’.
| Dict. Eng. Usage in Southern Afr. 53: Coolie pink, Violent pink colour [DSAE]. | |
| Sweet-smelling Jasmine 101: In its bleared windows stood jars of nameless things floating in oil and trays of bosomy cupcakes iced in the colour known as coolie pink. |
a shop owned by an Indian proprietor.
| Star 2 July 6: A native, sentenced [...] for stealing a bag of fruit and vegetables from B.J. Smith, in a coolie shop, at the corner of Sixth and Kafir streets [DSAE]. | |
| My Traitor’s Heart (1991) 184: In the old days such merchandise [i.e. black cosmetics] was available only in ‘coolie’ trading stores. |
(S.Afr.) the black area of a predominantly white town.
| Separate Development 54: Koelietown was crammed into a corner of the city. |