coolie

• cooly, kuli, quli, koelie, etc.

From Hindi क़ुली (qulī) and Urdu قلی‎ (qulī, “hired laborer”), named after a Gujarati tribe or caste of that name. Other forms occur in Bengali [script needed] (kuli) and Tamil கூலி (kūli, “daily hire”). Possibly also influenced by Hindi कोली (kolī, “weaver; low-class”).

The Mandarin word 苦力 (kǔlì), meaning "to exert one's abilities; heavy labour work" in Classical Chinese, may have been influenced by cognates of the above Hindi word in other languages and may have further influenced English.

• IPA^(key): /ˈkuːli/

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• Rhymes: -uːli

coolie (plural coolies)

1. (offensive, slang) 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.
   • 1913, Elizabeth Kimball Kendall, A Wayfarer in China,

     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.

   • 1992, Jan Breman, E. Valentine Daniel, Conclusion: The Maiking of a Coolie, E. Valentine Daniel, Henry Bernstein, Tom Brass (editors), Plantations, Proletarians, and Peasants in Colonial Asia, Frank Cass & Co., page 268,

     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.

   • 2008, Lisa Yun, The Coolie Speaks: Chinese Indentured Laborers and African Slaves in Cuba, Temple University Press, page xix,

     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.

2. (offensive, slang, Trinidad, West Indies, Guyana, South Africa and other parts of Africa) An Indian or a person of Indian descent.
   • 1991, Larry Bond and Patrick Larkin, Vortex‎, page 56:

     Well, he and his troops had shown the koefietjies-the little coolies-how quickly and how easily Afrikaner explosive shells could knock it down.

• coolie hat
• coolie orange

• Yule, Henry and Burnell, A. C. (1886): Hobson-Jobson The Anglo-Indian Dictionary. Reprint: Ware, Hertfordshire. Wordsworth Editions Limited. 1996.

• Le grand dictionnaire Ricci de la langue chinoise, (2001), Vol. III, p. 833.