Jacky Howe

plural Jacky Howes · alternative Jackie Howe

1. AustraliaA type of blue sleeveless shirt worn by sheep shearers and labourers.

   1949, Ruth Park, Poor Man's Orange, in 2010, The Harp in the South Trilogy, Penguin, unnumbered page, He had finished his tea and was sitting in his Jackie Howe, which is a singlet with the sleeves out of it, and called after a famous shearer of the blade days.

   5 more examples

   Still, no one has ever thought before of associating a papaw with a “Jacky Howe,” or, say, fruit salad with a flannel shirt.

   1941, Queensland Department of Primary Industries, Queensland Agricultural Journal, volume 56, page 171

   As the Jacky Howe was identified with the canecutter so too were the canvas sandshoes which were worn till the canvas rotted.

   1990, Bianka Vidonya Balanzategui, Gentlemen of the Flashing Blade, page 28

   The coppers tell me that whenever they pull the old curmudgeon over — and he′s still driving a B-Model Mack well into his eighties — all he would ever be wearing was a Jacky Howe singlet* and a pair of jocks.

   1996, David Foster, The Glade within the Grove, page 58

   Men in shorts and navy Jacky Howe singlets were building a causeway across the spill of swift, shallow water.

   2002, Kerry McGinnis, Heart Country, unnumbered page

   Occasionally I would see their innards revealed by a gang of men in Jackie Howes with jack-hammers and chinking mattocks picked^([sic]) the sleepers clean of ballast like bull ants cleaning up a fish′s frame.

   2010, Roger K. A. Allen, Ballina Boy: A Child's Odyssey through the 1950s, page 194

   Synonyms: singlet, wifebeater