rouser

See also: Rouser

English

Etymology

rouse +‎ -er

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -aʊzə(ɹ)

Noun

rouser (plural rousers)

1. Something very exciting or stimulating.
2. One who rouses another from sleep.
3. (colloquial, archaic) A stirrer in a copper for boiling wort.
4. (Australia) A roustabout.
   • 1896, Henry Lawson, “Stragglers”, in While the Billy Boils, Sydney, N.S.W.: Angus and Robertson […], →OCLC, page 85:

     They are all shearers, or at least they say they are. Some might be only ‘rousers.’

   • a. 1964, Edward Harrington, “[In Faraway Places] The Swagless Swaggie”, in William [Rossa] Cole, editor, Rough Men, Tough Men: Poems of Action and Adventure, New York, N.Y.: The Viking Press, published 1969, →LCCN, page 150:

     The shearers threw some blankets in / To make another swag, / The rousers gave a billycan / And brand new tucker bag; […]

   • 1967, Graham Jenkin, Two Years on Bardunyah Station: Being an Account of the Experiences of a Jackaroo, Together with Some Poems, etc., Seacombe Heights, South Australia: Pitjantjara Publishers, page 66:

     The aim of the rouser is eventually to become a shearer via the medium of the learner’s pen, and in fact the rousie is really an apprentice shearer; but there is certainly a great gulf between the accomplished prince of the board and the miserable rouseabout in the strange new world of his first shed.

Derived terms

• rabble rouser

Anagrams

• sourer