• roughneck • Pronunciation: rêf-nek • Hear it! Part of Speech:
Noun Meaning: 1. A rowdy, a thug, a tough, a hooligan. 2. An
oil-rig worker. Notes: There are two kinds of compound nouns.
One that refers to things that are members of the category of
the head of the compound, which is always the second
constituent. For example a birdhouse is a kind of house and a
motorboat is a kind of boat. Today's Good Word is the other
kind, whose meaning has "having X" built in. Thus a redhead is
not a head, but someone who has a red head and roughneck is
someone who has, figuratively, a rough neck. This noun may be
used verbally with the meaning "to act like a roughneck". In
Play: Working on an oil rig is a rough job, so we can see how
those who work on an oil rig picked up this name. A father might
ask his daughter's date: "What kind of roughneck are you,
'Snake', an oil rig worker or . . . the other kind?" We have
another word whose meaning approaches that of today's Good Word:
"There's a fine line between roughhousing a