HomeServicesBlogDictionariesContactSpanish Course
Back to search

Coolie

Noun CEFR B1
ˈkuːli

Definitions

  1. 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.
  2. An Indian or a person of Indian descent.
    Caribbean, Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad-and-Tobago, ethnic, slur

Equivalents

Españolculí
Françaiscoolie
DeutschKuli
25 more languages
Afrikaanskoelie
العربيةالحمال
Bosanskičulečuli
Češtinakuli
Ελληνικάκούλης
Suomikuli
Hrvatskičulečuli
Magyarkuli
Bahasa Indonesiakulipekerja kasar
日本語苦力
ភាសាខ្មែរគូលី
한국어쿨리
Kurdîçûlekolekulîkulîs
မြန်မာကူလီ
Nederlandskoelie
PolskiKulis
Portuguêscoleculecúli
Slovenčinakuli
Српскиčulečuli
Kiswahilikuli
Türkçeköle
اردوقلی
Tiếng Việtcự liphủ

Examples

One day when the Man's Wife and the Tertium Quid had just arrived in the Cemetery, they saw some coolies breaking ground.”
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.”
Outside, beyond the sun-baked station yard, a rice mill chugged away in the distance, and sweating coolies unloaded bags of rice from creaking bullock carts.”
“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.”
Community histories did not necessarily feature the coolie, partly due to the fact thatcoolie” is a classed term. Asian coolies were regarded as lowly laborers.”
Well, he and his troops had shown the koefietjies-the little coolies-how quickly and how easily Afrikaner explosive shells could knock it down.”
Even a coolie would have been better.”

CEFR level

B1
Intermediate
This word is part of the CEFR B1 vocabulary — intermediate level.
See all B1 English words →

See also

Learn this word in context

See Coolie used in real conversations inside our free language course.

Start Free Course

Know this word better than we do? Language is a living thing — help us keep it growing. Collaborate with Babel Free